222 – THE POWER OF POSITIVE THINKINGJune 19, 1960
Henry F. Kulp
Ephesians 4: 17 - 20 This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind, Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart: Who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness. But ye have not so learned Christ;
The week before last when we finished our Sunday morning message, we had reached Ephesians 4: 16 From whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love.
We read here how the Body of Christ is pictured as a body, and every member is working together for the edifying of that body. And we brought out there should be the working of every member not fighting with one another, but working for a common cause, glorifying of the One Who is the Head of the Body, the Lord Jesus Christ.
1/ Deuteronomy 20: 19, 20 When thou shalt besiege a city a long time, in making war against it to take it, thou shalt not destroy the trees thereof by forcing an axe against them: for thou mayest eat of them, and thou shalt not cut them down (for the tree of the field is man's life) to employ them in the siege: Only the trees which thou knowest that they be not trees for meat, thou shalt destroy and cut them down; and thou shalt build bulwarks against the city that maketh war with thee, until it be subdued.
Here we brought out a portion of Scripture, that when the Israelites were to besiege a city, they were not to cut down any fruit-bearing trees. The only trees they were to cut down where those they did not use for meat. Because they would need these fruit bearing trees later on.
2/ In a beautiful example in God’s Word of this care for God’s fruit trees, given us in the Book of Acts, in the case of Apollos.
Acts 18: 24 - 26 And a certain Jew named Apollos, born at Alexandria, an eloquent man, and mighty in the scriptures, came to Ephesus. This man was instructed in the way of the Lord; and being fervent in the spirit, he spake and taught diligently the things of the Lord, knowing only the baptism of John. And he began to speak boldly in the synagogue: whom when Aquila and Priscilla had heard, they took him unto them, and expounded unto him the way of God more perfectly.
You’ll remember that Apollos who was in earnest and had a love for the Scriptures, appealed to the heart of Priscilla and Aquila. He did not know the knowledge of truth that he should have. He had not gone beyond the baptism of John, and this Godly couple recognized this and they knew he was seeking the truth, and they knew he wanted the truth, so this Godly couple, instead of exposing his ignorance to others, denouncing him as a legalist without true Gospel light, took him into their home, and there in Christian love expounded to him the way of God more perfectly.
We should use our axes against the deadly trees of sin and error, and not on one another. We should work together to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
3/ Ephesians 5: 17 Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is.
You will notice that Paul says, we are not to walk as other Gentiles walk. This is a very clear statement, one that every believer has to recognize. The Christian is called out from the world. His life is not to be as the lives of those about him. A very common thing is when you are in Rome, do as the Romans do, but this does not apply to the believers. Those who do not believe in a separated walk will have to get rid of verse 17. Separation is very definitely taught in the Word of God.
4/ Certainly our walk and our talk should be different from the Gentiles, and then, certainly we can’t worship with them because they know not God. There should be separation in the matter of worship.
Revelations 18: 4, 5 And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues. For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities.
Here during the tribulation, God makes a statement that is very clear and it says to His people during the tribulation, they have to come out from her, and be not partaker in her sins and receive not of her plagues. In other words, do not worship with her, do not follow in her path, or you will receive judgement for it. I am sure the same principle holds true today. We are not to walk and talk like the Gentiles, the unsaved. We can’t worship with them. God has led us to a life of separation.
5/ How do the Gentiles walk? They walk in the vanity of their minds. The word translated, vanity, here does not mean what it does ordinarily. We usually think of it as meaning pride, but the word here is not pride, but rather something like a mirage, an allusion, that which is imagined, not actually true.
6/ I think we can sum it up by saying, their minds were playing tricks on them. In other words, they are in a mental fog. You can hear them say, “Now hell—don’t believe in hell, why should I believe in hell? Would you as a father cast your children into a lake of fire, to burn forever and ever?” And they say, “If you wouldn’t do it, why would a loving God do that?”
They are not capable of reasoning. It sounds reasonable to them, but they are in a mental fog.
Then take the matter of the Trinity. They’ll say, “You show me the Trinity, you explain the Trinity to us. How can God be God the Father, the Son, and God the Holy Spirit?” And they’ll say, “It is not reasonable.”
They cannot understand it in their mind. That is because they are in a mental fog.
7/ You might say, why do the Gentiles have minds that can’t understand these things? There are two things I want you to see about the unsaved individual’s mind.
Romans 1: 28 And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient;
8/ But let us look at this verse a little more carefully. In verse 1: 28 did like, those two words, have the thought of to put to the test for the purpose of approving, and so they did with God. The human race put God on trial, and it rejected Him after trial, so the thought is here, that man at one time said they knew God, they had God in their knowledge, but they did not want God, they put Him on trial as God, and they found Him not worthy to be a God of worship, so they put Him out of their minds. Then God gave them over to a reprobate mind.
9/ So we can see the human mind, without any help from the outside is reprobate, is a wicked mind. Therefore, that thought of the power of positive thinking is absolutely a false notion—it’s childishness. God tells us that we are not to walk as the Gentiles walk.
10/ But then the human mind gets help. II Corinthians 4: 3, 4 But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost: In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.
Those who are not saved will find that their Gospel is hid, and it is hid to them because the god of this world, Satan, has blinded the minds of them who believe not, lest they should get saved. Satan has taken hold of this reprobate mind and he vails it so that men and woman will not see the truth. So you can see while we are told not to walk in the vanity of the unsaved mind. It is reprobate to begin with, and it is blinded by Satan.
11/ Of course, the world does not understand this condition. It is blind to its present mental condition. Just to show you how bad off the world is. It doesn’t know where it came from, it doesn’t know where it is going. Ask the world in its philosophy and it cannot give you an answer to any one of these questions. It will bring up that old chestnut about evolution, but it means nothing.
12/ Man, outside of Jesus Christ, is like the poor maniac of Gadara. I am quite certain that especially many religious Gentiles would object to being classified with such a man, but there he is in all his heathen and pagan misery. The poor fellow was alone and out of control throughout his boyhood and to make matters worse, he was a terror unto himself, but then one day, Jesus Christ came to him, and something happens to the individual Luke 8: 35 and here we read these lovely words. Then they went out to see what was done; and came to Jesus, and found the man, out of whom the devils were departed, setting at the feet of Jesus, clothed, and now notice, and in his right mind: and they were afraid.
Yes, when Jesus Christ comes in, something happens to the mind. This maniac was in his right mind. The world without Jesus Christ is not in a right mind.
Romans 12: 2 And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.
And here Paul tells us that every man is not to think of himself more highly then he ought to think, but is to think soberly, and in the Greek that word, soberly, is SO – FRON – EH’ – O it means a healed mind.
The moment one is saved God gives him a healed mind, and the believer is not to walk in the lost mind of the world, but in the healed mind that God has given to him. The same thing is brought out to us in Titus 2: 11 - 12 For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, Teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world;
The grace of God teaches us that denying ungodly and worldly lust we should live soberly—that’s the same Greek word, we should live with a healed mind. We are not to walk as the Gentiles walk in their mental fog, but we are to walk with our healed minds, being able to understand the Word of God.
13/ Then notice the next charge. Ephesians 4: 18 Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart:
They are alienated from the life of God, and of course, this is speaking spiritually. Mentally they are in a fog, and spiritually they are void of life. Oh, yes, they have physical life, but they do not have spiritual life. You will hear many people talk about the divine spark that is in every man, but that is not true. That is a thought that only the blighted mind, a mind that is in a mental fog, can conceive. Man is mentally in a fog, and spiritually he is dead.
14/ But then Paul goes on in the 18th verse to talk about their spiritual condition, and he says not only do they lack life, but they have ignorance in them, and they have blindness of the heart, they are ignorant of this condition, and the word, blindness is really hardness, yet that does not give us the thought of this word sufficiently. It means a heart that is under the influence of anesthetic. A person may be alive and quivering with pain, and he is put under the influence of an anesthetic, he is not aware of the true condition of things. Men and women under the influence, and the awful deadening power of sin are so blinded that they do not understand the real state of affairs, they do not understand their own condition, they do not know that they are dead to God. That is why we have to plead with men and woman, be ye reconciled to God. That is why in preaching the gospel the first step is to show men and women how terrible they are in God’s sight—What awful sinners they are.
15/ Ephesians 4: 19 Who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.
Now we have seen what God says about man, mentally and spiritually, and then what He has to say about them morally. Morally they are vile, they have given themselves over to lasciviousness, they work all uncleanness with greediness. Notice, because they are past feeling, that means beyond pain, they do these things without any thought at all. This answers a very important thought to us, folks ask me if I really believe that each succeeding generation gets worse, and I most certainly do. Man in this condition becomes more and more hardened to sin, and sin becomes less repulsive to him with each passing day. Some things that were terrible sins even in the eyes of unsaved people ten years ago, are now acceptable practice to them. Mankind goes on, he becomes more impervious to the awfulness of sin, sin doesn’t give him any pain. The very same thing can happen to the believer. A believer can permit a sin in his life, and it causes him awful anguish, terrible anguish, but if he keeps doing that thing, he will find that each time the pain becomes less, each time his conscience smites him a little less hard, and soon he has reached a point where it doesn’t bother him at all. He doesn’t even bother to make excuses for his sin. If that can happen to a believer, notice what happens to man because he is in a mental fog, and spiritually dead to God. Each day that he lives, he becomes harder to sin. I hate to think what society will be like 100 years from now, if the Lord Jesus terries.
16/ The thought being beyond pain was described very well by Louis Talbot, He told that while living in Australia, he spent a holiday in the cow country. He was there when the heifers were branded, and he went to see the procedure. The red-hot figure was placed on the body of each animal. He said the faces of those animals still come to his mind, he said he can still hear them groaning and “I can still see them as they rolled their eyes in pain.” After the brand had been placed there, they were free to run away, licking their wounds. But he said, “If you went back in about three weeks to see one of these heifers and if you made a cut with a knife in the branded place, it would not have pained that heifer. The heat so paralyzed the nerves in that part of the heifer, that the heifer is past feeling.”
And so it is with the world today. Having been branded by sin. They are past feeling, and more and more as they are branded, they get less and less feeling as far as sin is concerned less and less pain.
17/ I have also noticed this fact, which I believe is important to bring out at this point, and that is people who are dealt with the Gospel, they hear the Gospel and they turn it down, and they keep turning it down. They are convicted, and they realize they should be saved, but if they do not make the decision, I find that as time goes by, they become harder and harder, until you can hardly reach them because they have become beyond pain.
18/ Ephesians 4: 20 But ye have not so learned Christ;
But then, Paul tells us in seven words, that for the believer, it is another story—ye have not so learned Christ.
What does he mean by this statement? You know the answer.
Ephesians 4: 21 - 23 If so be that ye have heard him, and have been taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus: That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts; And be renewed in the spirit of your mind;
Allow the Holy Spirit to change your mind.
AMEN
Ref: 06/19/1960 / 222 THE POWER OF POSITIVE THINKING / 02/07/2021
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