S. THE BEWITCHING POWER OF SATAN

THE BEWITCHING POWER OF SATAN

TEXT: O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you? - Galatians 3:1.

I wish to make a few statements before discussing the text. The first relates to peoples. There is a difference in the characteristics of peoples. "Galatians" ¾ that is what a Greek would say. A Latin writer would have written it "Gauls." A modern writer would have said, "Frenchmen, O foolish Frenchmen." That is to say, the people to whom this letter was written were French people, or Gauls. The history of their migration from France to Asia Minor is a wonderful history. Some time look it up and read it. But in their wanderings they always retained their national characteristics, a mercurial people, easily excited, easily cooled off again; now way up yonder and now way down there; fired one moment by enthusiasm and suffering deep mental depression another day. You will find that to be the character of these people, whether you read Caesar of Thierry. The second statement which I wish to make is one of philosophy. This text speaks about the presentation of a great tragedy, and the statement I wish to make is that nothing ever deeply influences the human heart but tragedy.

It is utterly impossible for comedy to strive against tragedy in attracting human attention and in holding it. A comic speaker pleases the first time you hear him, but woe to the man if he tells his jokes over a second or third time. You can go to the theater and listen one time to Shakespeare’s "Comedy of Errors," but you cannot go and hear it three times in succession. But you can hear "Richard III" or "Macbeth," or any other in which there is some tragedy, a thousand times.

Hence the great sculptors and painters have found their immortality when their subjects have represented some mighty tragedy, such as Prometheus chained to the cold rocks of Mount Causasus, the Last Supper with the shadow of the coming tragedy resting upon the brow of the Son of God, Laocoon around whose: body and the bodies of whose children the serpents from the sea have wrapped themselves and are crushing them to death.

These and other great masterpieces show that if you want to attract the attention of mankind, you must present to them a tragedy and not a comedy. It is a pity that public speakers do not pay more attention to this. It is an exceedingly small ambition, the ambition to be a witty speaker.

There was presented a tragedy to these mercurical Galatians nearly two thousand years ago. Christ Jesus crucified was evidently set forth before them, and the effect of it was wonderful. That same tragedy presented now has a wonderful effect, and it will have until the subject of the tragedy shall come the second time, without sin unto salvation.

Now my third statement is this: One of the most ordinary incidents of religious life is the lapse, from an early profession of religion. We hold a meeting of many days and by varied service, of sermon, song and prayer, we seek to convert our hearers. An interest is awakened, crowds attend, and in the course of time quite a number profess to be converted. Time passes on and there is a lapse on the part of many who profess to be converted. A second meeting comes, and not all ¾ never all ¾ of those who had lapsed, but a considerable number of them come back and are restored again, some of:whom lapse again. A third meeting, and not all of those who were restored that second time ¾ never all of them ¾ but a considerable number of them are restored a third time. And so the matter goes on, meeting after meeting, and each period of falling away that follows the meeting eliminates some of the number who originally made a profession of faith. The sifting process that follows a protracted meeting eliminates some forever and ever. They never do come back.

Now, did you ever think of this, that there is never any lapse from an intellectual profession of faith, never any lapse on the part of a ritualistic professor of faith? Never. The lapses always take place in those denominations which insist upon a supernatural faith in Jesus Christ, and who insist upon what is called regeneration. There are these two distinct elements in the profession of faith: I not only profess to personally believe that the Lord Jesus Christ is my Savior, but I do profess that I have been changed internally in my disposition and spirit. Now the lapse indicates these two distinct elements. Generally it is on the second element; that is, the evidence that relates to the internal change and it comes in this way: The reason that I professed to be a Christian was I had certain emotional evidences - evidences that touched the affections. I had certain peace of mind. I had certain joy of heart. I had certain fervor of spirit. Therefore I professed to be changed. Now in the course of time that peace seems to be gone and that fervor seems to be gone, and that joy seems to be gone, and as the original profession of the change was based upon their presence, so their absence leads me to doubt my conversion.

I say that the lapse takes place oftenest on the second element of the profession, that which relates to an internal change, whose symptoms or evidences are of an emotional kind. Hence that song, "Where is the blessedness I knew, When first I saw the Lord? Where is the soul-refreshing view Of Jesus and His Word?

"What peaceful hours I then enjoyed, How sweet their memory still; But now I find an aching void The world can never fill."

Now this text has to do with the question of falling away. The Apostle Paul, on his way through Asia Minor, in a very disappointing way to himself, was taken very ill, and while suffering great bodily illness and from the interruption to his journey, he commenced to preach in Galatia, and he preached so as to establish quite a number of churches, the churches of Galatia. And he was astounded at the warm reception of the gospel and how gladly the people heard it; how they stood and listened to every word. And he held up before them as a plan of salvation a tragedy, Jesus Christ on the cross, and he pointed to them the blood that flowed from the veins of the dying Son of God as the basis of eternal life. He pointed them out a salvation which was by grace through faith, and assured them that faith in that dying Redeemer would bring them internal evidences of peace and rest and joy, and they had it.

Now, Paul went on his journey and soon word came that there had been a fearful lapse all over that section of country. They had turned away from that gospel which he had preached unto them, of salvation by grace through faith, of salvation through the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. They had turned away from that and had taken up the Old Testament ceremonies as a basis of salvation. Now this provokes his letter and this brings out his question, "O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you … before whose eyes Jesus Christ was set forth evidently, crucified, among you?" Notice that to change from the gospel that he preached to them to the ritualism that they adopted after he left, was a marvel to him. He says, "I marvel; it is a wonder to me; it is a phenomenon. I marvel that you should so soon be removed from the gospel which was preached unto you unto another gospel which is not a gospel." He says it was not only a marvel, but it was a folly: "O foolish Galatians!" There was something irrational and illogical in it.

Now let us very briefly consider the elements of the folly. What are the things that made it an extremely illogical and irrational thing to do? First, he says, "You are fallen from grace. I presented unto you a plan of salvation by grace and not of works. It comes from the favor and mercy of God. And now you have turned back to a system of salvation by works. That is foolish. You don’t commence with grace and end in works." Not only this, but he says, "When I preached unto you salvation by grace you received the Spirit. Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith? And if you receive the Spirit by the hearing of faith then let me ask you, what is the reason that you should go back to the works of the law that never could confer the Spirit? It is unreasonable. It indicates that you are fools to think that you could commence in the Spirit and make yourselves perfect in the flesh. It would be as if you had commenced to fly and then turned back to crawl."

He says it is foolish in that it is the voluntary surrender of freedom for bondage. "You have replaced a yoke on you your fathers could not bear and which no man was ever able to bear. You were freed from that yoke, and now, when I left you as free men, shouting and rejoicing in the glory of that freedom, I hear that you have voluntarily put on yourselves the chains of bondage again. It is wonderful that men would do that. It is foolish that they would do it. Not only does the folly consist in this, but you have gone back from the older covenant of God to the younger. That covenant of grace which antedated the giving of the law, that covenant of grace which reaches back to the Garden of Eden, you have laid aside, and have left Calvary to stand under Mount Sinai. It is foolishness.

"Not only this, but you have given up the estate of sons in order to go back and be servants, to be under tutors. Those ceremonial requirements served their purpose in their day and time. They were to he kept up, even by those who saw through them, and had true faith, until the object of faith should come, the Lord Jesus Christ." For Paul says in the context: "The law was our schoolmaster unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after that faith is come (i.e., Jesus, the object of faith) we are no longer under a schoolmaster (i.e., of types and shadows)." Then, indeed, "the heir" being a child, "differed nothing from a servant but was under tutors and governors." But now to go back and observe the days and months, and new moons and seasons and years, that pertain to a ceremony of types and shadows, after the Substance has come, is profound folly and stupidity. Not only this, but your folly is manifest in the waste of your sufferings. You suffered a great many things in order to believe in Jesus, Christ as your Savior. It was not popular. You were persecuted for becoming Christians. All that suffering was in vain, if your present course is the right course.

Finally he said their folly consisted in this: If your object in going back to that practical and personal plan for salvation is to secure practical and personal righteousness, then you have made yourselves bigger fools than in the other particular. Perfect righteousness is only to be attained by faith in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. But if you want to be more nearly conformed to the Ten Commandments in your own actual life, you can do this more readily by starting from the standpoint of a regenerated nature than you can by any covenant of works. The idea prevails even in this time, as is evidenced by an evangelist calling upon a congregation to leave the gospel of Jesus Christ and go back and stand upon the Ten Commandments. If you want to rightly perform the Ten Commandments the best and only way for you to keep them is after your souls have been regenerated by God’s Spirit, and after your sins have been washed away in His blood. First, make the tree good.

Now all this is introductory to my main question. Here is a phenomenon, and it is not an extraordinary one, but an ordinary one; it happens every day; it happens right here in this congregation; it happens after any meeting anywhere and by whomsoever held. You see people who profess to be Christians, and they give credible evidences that they are Christians, and who ultimately prove to be Christians, who yet temporarily fall away and seem to, seek other methods.

I surmise that some of these people in this case were genuinely converted. All of the professions made by these Galatians were not false professions. Therefore you have to assume that genuine Christians who were led to Christ by Paul’s preaching did lapse from that profession and go back to seeking peace of mind through a different method.

Now my question is: How do you account for such a phenomenon? An effect is bound to have a cause. If you see only one incident of a strange kind, and that is an isolated case, you are not especially called upon to explain it. But if you see in a whole province, like Galatia, a wide-spread profession of religion, and then in a very short space of time you see a lapse that corresponds in magnitude with the original profession - you see men by the’ multitude doing things that are so utterly stupid and irrational and illogical that it marks them as fools, how do you account for it? Hence Paul’s question: "Who hath bewitched you?" I tried for a long time to get rid of that word, bewitched, but there it stands, and it means the same thing in the Greek as it means in the English. It means an irresistible spell cast upon one by another, what is called "smiting with the eye." It means bewitched in the old fashioned sense of that word. It means that a power had intervened, casting an irresistible spell over the minds of these people. And this question tries to find him! "Who hath bewitched you?" Who hath done it? Here is a wizard’s work. Where is the wizard? Here is the witchcraft. Where is the witch? Who is it?

Some of you were startled two Sundays ago when I stated that the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ could be as sensibly felt and realized as could the presence of a friend to whom you were talking. Now I say to you that there is another presence which can be as vividly and as sensibly felt as any earthly presence can be realized and felt. I stop at no halfway explanations. I go for a solution of the problem to the father of witchcraft, the devil, and I say that this lapsing work in Galatia, was the work of the devil; that a hallucination was cast over the minds of the people. Such folly is not otherwise explicable. Such consequences cannot otherwise find an adequate cause.

"Who hath bewitched you?" Why, I venture to say that you older Christians have almost unconsciously used the very words of the Apostle Paul in looking at some case or a profession of religion, where there had been a speedy lapse: "I marvel! It astonishes me! How is it to be accounted for?" You say, "Why, I sat there and heard that young man tell about God’s dealings with his soul. I saw the tears roll down his face. I felt the tremor in his tone, the vibration of intense feeling in every expression that fell from his lips, and I marvel that he is so soon removed. What on earth is the explanation of it?" When you go home today read Webster’s definition of "bewitched," and when you get the Greek word and in all of the best lexicons read the definition there, and you will see that this means here just what it says. Who hath cast a spell of fascination, an irresistible spell, over you, that you should do a thing so incredibly foolish as that which you have done?

Every intelligent man is bound to take notice of marked phenomena that occur around him; especially is he bound to notice such things as I have just told you. Now you are also bound to account for them, and your explanation must be commensurate with the fact. But I defy any man to give an explanation of many of the lapses from a profession of faith in Jesus Christ except upon the hypothesis of a devil.

Incidentally, this leads to a cognate thought. There is here in Texas some preaching of a kind, as expressed in the last Baptist Herald. I quote that to bring out the thought. The writer of an article says, "There are in Texas two families of the Baptists, the assurance-family and the anti-assurance-family." He closes his article with this tremendous statement: "These two families cannot stand together on earth or in heaven; in this world or in the world to come."

If he would read the Philadelphia Confession of Faith or the New Hampshire Confession of Faith, he would very easily see that at least his part of the family is not Baptistic. But what I want to say is this: Suppose such a theory as he advocates was applied to this case of these Galatians. Here is a vast number of people that with remarkable evidence of genuineness make a profession of faith. Now here is a sudden lapse and they go back for a while at least from a plan of salvation by grace to a plan of salvation by works. They go back from a commencement in the spirit to a consummation in the flesh. They go back from a state of spiritual freedom and seem to prefer a state of spiritual bondage. They turn their backs upon the splendid light of the New Testament and seek to hide themselves in the mists and shadows of Old Testament times. And you want to account for that fact. According to his theory none of them were ever converted. In that case there was no necessity for bewitching to take them back. There was no room for marvelings or astonishment. There was no phenomenon at all. But Paul does not treat the case that way.

It shows this, that when one is converted, he is not a full grown Christian; that when one is regenerated he is just a child in Christ Jesus, just a baby, and that this babe must be developed into spiritual manhood or womanhood, and it is in the power of an enemy, where the means of spiritual growth and development are neglected, to cast a spell over the mind of that babe in Christ. Such an explanation harmonizes with Paul’s effort is restore them and with all our own observations of the facts concerning religious meetings.

Now, I have very carefully avoided today discussing the question of a permanent lapse from a true profession of faith in Christ. That is outside of the subject before me, and you know well enough what would be my reply to such a question as that. I am just taking a large group of professions, such as are made in ordinary meetings, and I am calling your attention to the fact that a considerable number of these lapse after the meeting is over, and that not all those who lapse are restored in the next meeting, and that not all of those who are restored in the next meeting are restored in the third meeting, and that each sifting of restoration eliminates some of the original number who are eliminated forever. They never do come back. Those that never do come back, I am not discussing at all; but I am discussing those who do come back, who are restored, and who afterwards show that the root of the matter was in them; that they were, when they professed originally, God’s children ¾ God’s children for a while under an eclipse, under a spell. An enemy had come in and seduced them for the time being from the beauty and holiness and simplicity of the plan of salvation in Jesus Christ. That is the class I am talking about. The conclusion of it all is just this: That our people have managed, by some sort of intellectual legerdemain, to sidetrack out of the sight of human consideration one of the mightiest factors in human life. I mean the devil, not thinking of him as a personality, not thinking of him as once an angel of light, not thinking of him as having power, where a Christian is unwary, to bewitch him, to cast a spell Aver him, to lead him temporarily from the truth.

I am afraid that I cannot get quite close enough to you the thought that I am endeavoring to impress upon you, and in order to do it, I will tell you a dream. Understand, it is just a dream. I am not telling it as Scripture. The sole object of the dream is to be an illustration of a thought. I had this vivid dream. I dreamed that I was on the cone of a vast mountain range, back of which was a higher cone, whose summit was lost in the clouds of heaven, and looking down from the edge of that mountain range was no horizon. In my dream, I tried to see a horizon. I could not see it. It was ever and forever a stretching away of space without a boundary, While sleeping I seemed to hear a voice which said, "Open your eyes and see from what you have been guarded." I opened my eyes. I saw nothing. I kept looking all around seeing nothing but feeling a presence. At last a shape outlined itself, and if a painter could paint that shape as I saw it I think he would win immortality. It was a shape, something human-like, whose height could not even be guessed at. It seemed to be of porcelain, translucent but not transparent. But even in that translucent state there seemed to be a hint of having once been transparent, and also a hint that it would ultimately be entirely opaque. In other words, it had a prophecy of becoming darker and denser, as well as a memory of having been brighter and purer. It was the most beautiful form I ever saw. As my eye went up and up the symmetry of that strange figure, I saw the eye looking at me sideways, and it was in the eye that the thought of the devil came into my mind. It was the eye of despair, the eye of malice, the eye of cunning, the eye of undying hate, the eye of the murderer. It all flashed into my very soul from just one glance of that eye as I shivered that this was what the voice meant when it said, "Wake up and see from what you have been guarded." The basilisk gleam of that eye made the blood run cold. The look seemed to say, "I would destroy you, if I were not hindered."

Now, that was just a dream, nothing but a dream, but it serves as an illustration; that just as sure as there can be a presence of God that we can feel, so there can be a presence of the devil that can influence us; so there can be a power of an evil one that can cast a spell over the mind and cause the subject of the spell to do irrational, illogical and foolish things.

O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, you who saw Christ on the cross; you who received the Spirit; you whose hearts have been made to throb and dilate with the internal presence of the divine consolation? O Christians, what can be the power that could in a short while, sidetrack you to go grovelling in the dust again? Oftentimes I have seen joyous young Christians, oh, how happy, how precious the light in their faces, how inexpressibly sweet the melody in their hearts! How every old Christian in the house would have his heart. melted when some dear loved one for whom he had prayed, for whom he had labored, would stand up and say, "I have found favor, and my heart is glad and there is peace in my soul." O, the joy of it! And then, maybe in a month, in one short month: ¾ O, the marvel of it the marvel of it to have to say, "Where is the blessedness you spoke of? Where is the soulrefreshing view of Jesus and His Word?" Somebody has intervened. Some power has come in here and eclipsed the bright day and made it night. The Apostle Peter says, "Beware of the devil." The Apostle Paul admonishes Christians to beware of the devil. The Lord Jesus Christ admonishes Christians to beware of the devil. He is back of all the sinister instrumentalities that are employed to weaken the usefulness, to dim the light of hope, to minimize the preciousness of the peace which you had when you professed that you were a child of God. Your war is not against flesh and blood.

Now, you may talk about the weakness of the flesh. There is a good deal in that. We have in our members a law that wars against the law of our minds. We know that. But there is a force so much higher than this that when you go to think of this higher force you scarcely mention the other. We rear not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers in high places.

There is a Satanic, a diabolical malice that seeks to worry the child of God, to handicap him in his usefulness, to throw a spell over him, to have siren songs divert him from the path of his life, to lead him away where he will live unheeding the boom of the artillery of the great war that is going on, not seeing the dark clouds that are gathering over him, and the bright vistas that are opening up to brighter and heavenly light. It takes a spell like that to account for the fact.

Now you can understand in the light of Paul’s question the earnestness of those old Puritans on the subject of witchcraft. They were wrong, as they dealt with the subject, but under the phenomena of that day, and under similar phenomena in the

Old Testament days, there is a stupendous truth without which such things would never have marred the fair page of American history as the witchcraft days in New England. Who hath bewitched you? and you? and you? I am inquiring for the wizards. I am looking for the witch. I am not looking at the spell itself. I am not looking at the web of the spider, but where is the spider? Where is the one that wove the web? Who hath bewitched you? Now, do you go home and say right down to the very depths of your heart, "There is a devil, and he goeth about and he seeketh evil, and the track of his march can be traced just as plainly in the records of the past as you can trace the hand of God in history."

You can stand in the ashes of ancient cities, and look where a broken column falls and mingles together in historic dust, and you say, "Surely I can read the handwriting of God in history." And I will stand in these same ruins and I will say, "Surely I can read the handwriting of the devil in history." Are any of you today feeling the power of this old song, "Where is the blessedness I knew, When first I saw the Lord?"

O, thou bewitched Christian, let me ask you to go back to the Spirit and not trust in the flesh to consummate the Spirit. As it was salvation by faith in Christ that gave you that spiritual evidence, so it will be the cross of Christ, lifted up all the time, that will give you the continued life that is to be manifested by your conduct here in this world.

There was a devil that worked in Massachusetts and Connecticut, and the magistrates said, "Who hath bewitched these people?" and they made an inquisition for the witch and left out the wizard.

It is the object of this sermon today to call your attention to the devil. It is the purpose of this sermon to impress upon your minds today that there is a power, not flesh and blood, that will walk around you, and consider you, as he walked around

Job and considered him, and that your eyes ought to be opened to it, and that the consciousness of that presence ought at all times to make you desire to feel a nearness to God and reliance upon the divine help.