Opening Blinded Minds (Part 2)

In our present times, many of us are astonished at what the masses accept and believe. Every day something happens that makes us shake our heads in utter amazement. Common sense has been replaced by whatever the talking heads on TV say and whatever is trending on social media, regardless of how outlandish it may be. The current gullibility of mankind is at levels I have never experienced. Not even when I was a child did my acceptance of fairy tales rival what adults believe today. The existence of Superman and Spiderman are much more logical than what is being swallowed in our culture right now.

In 2nd Thessalonians, the Apostle Paul writes about the End Times, specifically about when the “lawless one”, referring to the Antichrist, will be roaming the earth. During that time of the tribulation, Paul reveals that those who choose to not turn to and believe in and trust in Christ will have their minds hardened and twisted by Almighty God. It says in 2 Thessalonians 2:11-12, “For this reason God will send upon them a deluding influence so that they will believe what is false. In order that they may all be judged who did not believe the truth but took pleasure in wickedness.”

Reading that almost sends a chill down my spine because of how relevant it is in our current society. It makes me wonder if we are not witnessing the beginning of this deluding influence that will lead us into the rapture of the church and the time of great tribulation. Obviously, no one knows the day or the hour, but we can and should recognize the signs of the times as recorded for us in Scripture.

But before God sends His divinely righteous delusion on hardened unbelievers during the tribulation, Satan has limited power to blind the minds of unbelievers even now. God can and does temporarily open those blinded minds as He sees fit so that they can hear and accept the gospel message, but our astonishment at what people believe today can be traced back to this power that Satan has been allowed to have in our age to blind unbelieving minds to the truth.

Turn with me in your Bible to the Book of 2nd Corinthians.

2 Corinthians 4:1-6

Let’s pray.

In Paul’s first Letter to the Corinthians, he wrote, “For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling, and my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God” (1 Corinthians 2:2-5).

In general, the church today has forsaken what Paul teaches in this passage. Modern evangelicalism has fallen into the unbiblical and even demonic trap of marketing, slick advertising, and even slicker folks behind the podiums of these churches attempting to make Christianity appeal to unbelievers. The Bible is abundantly clear that true Christianity will never appeal to unbelievers unless the Holy Spirit draws them, not human cleverness, or Madison Avenue packaging. If the Apostle Paul, the greatest evangelist known to mankind refused to employ such tactics because of the futility of their effectiveness, what makes people today think that they can do better?

The gospel message is clear – man and woman are born with a sin nature that is an affront to holy God. Sin is the problem and we all have been infected and saturated with sin. This vital understanding of the human condition cannot be sugar-coated, softened, or molded into something non-offensive. We are sinners to the core and condemned to eternity in hell and the lake of fire because of our sins. Trying to pour perfume on a pile of manure does not change the fact that it is still manure.

Left to our own devices, we will remain in our sins until the day we die and rightfully and justly be damned to pay for our sins with our very souls. Ephesians 2:1 tells us that we are all spiritually dead with no means of responding to the gospel. Apart from Jesus Christ, our spiritual eyes will remain blinded to the truth of the gospel for all of our days. But God, in His infinite mercy, removes those blinders so that we may know that He exists, know that our sins have condemned us, know that Jesus died in our place on the cross of Calvary, and transforms and justifies those who believe.

No amount of packaging, advertising, marketing, or any other human means of trying to make the gospel more attractive to unbelievers has even a sliver of hope in succeeding. Unbelievers are on the fast track to hell and only the Spirit of God can open their blinded eyes to the truth. And when the Holy Spirit does open their eyes, they had better grab that opportunity because there are no guarantees that the opportunity will be there again. Nobody is promised a single breath beyond their next one. There is never a more convenient time to respond to the gospel than now – never!

2 Corinthians 4:3

Paul wrote this opening phrase in response to the false teachers who criticized his teaching and preaching as irrelevant, offensive, and ineffective. Thus, he says, “even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing”, those who are rejecting the true and unvarnished gospel message.

People will always reject the gospel unless God steps in. Before any of us were saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, we were in the same multitude of people who had also previously rejected the gospel. You or I did not come to saving faith because someone promised us a better life. For me, it was sitting in church listening to a sermon on hell and realizing that because of my sins, even as a 10-year-old I was going there if I did not repent and believe. I was perishing, and until God opened my blinded spiritual eyes, the gospel was veiled to me.

Back in 1st Corinthians, Paul words it in another way – “But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised” (1 Corinthians 2:14).

So, again, if you are an unbeliever, if you have never repented of your sins, confessed Jesus as Lord of your life, and believed in your heart that God the Father raised Jesus from the dead, and your spiritual eyes recognize this right now, the Holy Spirit has temporarily stopped Satan from keeping you in blindness so you can repent and believe. Don’t wait to respond. Don’t even wait until this sermon is over. Pray to God in repentance and belief this very moment.

2 Corinthians 4:4

Satan, the god of this world, wants nothing more than to keep you chained in your sins and under his nasty thumb. He wants you to keep thinking that you’re okay, that you’re a good person, that God would never send anyone to hell, and that there are many ways to heaven. Satan wants you to keep coasting through life in your ignorance of the truth.

The word translated as minds in this verse refers to the ability to reason or think. The usage here most obviously then states that unbelievers are void of the ability to reason or think about spiritual matters – they have no capacity to grasp spiritual concepts. We are the ones who are foolish in their view of things because their minds are disconnected from the things of God and the truth of Scripture.

As I alluded to in the introduction, you just have to turn on the TV or log into your social media accounts to witness first-hand the deception and delusion that Satan has filled people’s minds with. Don’t be with that crowd. Respond to the Holy Spirit’s call on your life the very moment the truth is revealed to you.

Satan has a massive influence in every society around the world; he has temporary and limited widespread authority as the god of this world. People are under this pervasive influence and not only reject the gospel but are led by Satan to oppress and persecute and torture and murder those who name the name of Christ as God allows for His divine purposes. They hate God and God’s people because Satan hates God and God’s people. Satan’s own are under his demonic influence. Those in our nation’s government that are working hard and desperately to legislate the Bible as hate-speech, and are trying to make illegal, every law that adheres to the Bible’s standards, are deceived, and deluded and influenced and controlled by Satan.

Not all unbelievers have been turned over to their sin, as Romans 1 teaches, so not all unbelievers will hate you as a believer, but the numbers are growing. Being turned over to your sin simply means that you have rejected God’s truth one too many times and are given over to the life of sin that you have chosen over God’s truth. The cost of being a believer and follower of Jesus Christ is increasing by the hour in our so-called “free” nation.

When Paul continues in verse 4 to say that the consequences of ignoring the opportunities to believe and choosing to remain blinded to the truth is “so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God”, he is only saying that they are reaping what they have sown by their choice to not believe when they had opportunity. In one sense the free gift of God in salvation is available to all, but in another sense your opportunities to believe are divinely and severely limited.

In our sin, we are utterly depraved. In our pride, we are utterly deceived. In our self-sufficiency, we are utterly controlled by Satan. In our rejection of God’s Word, we are condemned. Jesus came into the world to seek and to save the lost, but until a person gets over him or herself and recognizes their complete dependance on God’s mercy and grace, they will remain a slave to Satan and will be cast into hell and the lake of fire with Satan and his demons at the judgment.

2 Corinthians 4:5

Paul understood his calling, and more importantly, Paul understood his place. Paul calls himself “your doulos for Jesus’ sake”. That is translated as bond-servant in the NASB, but as I have told you many times before, the Greek word doulos only has one proper English translation, and that is slave. Paul knew that his position as a preacher of the gospel and an ambassador of Jesus Christ was that of a lowly slave who had no rights and thus only said and did what he is told to say and do.

Only Christ Jesus is Lord, and there can only be one Lord. More then one Lord means there are none. For Paul to take any credit or prominence in his position as a preacher of the gospel would diminish the work of Christ. Prideful and arrogant preachers of the gospel need to repent, for their position is that of a slave and nothing more. Our Lord and Master does not treat us as common slaves, but common slaves we are.

I am obviously not scoring any points with the seeker sensitive crowd, but shouldn’t we risk offending people toward the truth rather than sweet-talk them with a lie? The gospel is offensive. The cross is offensive. Sin is offensive. But without the gospel and without the cross and without the awareness of sin, how offensive do you think hell is going to be?

There is no room for pride in being a believer nor in proclaiming the gospel message. It is only in complete humility that one can be saved. We have no merit of our own and there is absolutely nothing that we can do to earn our place in heaven. Pride in salvation probably means you haven’t truly been saved in the first place and have only been deceived by Satan – the author of pride.

The call to ministry, as we saw two-weeks ago, is the call to service. A prideful servant is an unprofitable servant. Thus, a prideful believer is an unprofitable believer as is a prideful preacher an unprofitable preacher. Pride is the foundational aspect of sin and will thus hinder if not completely thwart any attempts at serving God and serving one another as we have been called to do. And we are called to be not only the slave of Christ, but Paul calls himself the slave of those he has preached to. Total and complete humility.

I have mentioned many times before that the opposite of love is selfishness – in many if not most ways, selfishness is the manifestation of pride. And as we think that through, love manifests itself in service and giving or yourself.

I have been working through several aspects of worship on the daily Facebook Live devotions, and I have promoted the truth that worship is giving – giving our time to serving God and serving one another and giving our bodies or our lives to Christ, which Paul calls an acceptable means of worship in Romans 12:1-2. All of this intertwines. Love, worship, service, and humility among other characteristics is what defines a slave of Christ, while pride, selfishness, and self-promotion define those who are in defiance of God and His Word.

2 Corinthians 4:6

Spiritual darkness and blindness is the reality of unbelievers – they simply cannot see nor understand the message of Christ. Only God can illuminate their hearts and minds to the truth. Yet somehow in the providence of God He uses us and thus allows us to participate in this process of illumination.

We are given the undeserved privilege to serve humanity by sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ with those we have contact with. It is a privilege like no other, yet it is a privilege that most ignore. Most believers have somehow latched into the false notion that being a witness for Jesus Christ is for other people, not them. Beloved, you are missing out big time if you ignore or take a pass on being a witness for Christ – it is the first and foremost essence of being the servant you are called to be. Notice in this verse that we have had the Light of Christ shone in our hearts to give the Light to others.

We are called in the Book of Hebrews to fix our eyes on Jesus, and the Apostle Paul has given us the essence of that in this rich passage.

Let’s pray.