In this sermon, the speaker discusses the paradox of Jesus becoming a human being and how it is difficult to comprehend. The speaker also mentions that God allows us to become hardened in sin, like Pharaoh, in order to shock us and make us realize the worst things we have done. The speaker refers to Romans 1, which explains that we all start with knowledge of God but refuse it, leading to God hardening our hearts until we fall into sin. However, the speaker emphasizes that there is still a part of us that can call on the Lord and be saved.

That's the best human term we can use. Of course, it doesn't really fit, but it's the best we can say. Because it levels us. Then Jesus became that as us. And he perfected through suffering, as he learned obedience, and the high priest can do it now, you see. The high priest is eternal, high priest. He's risen again. Now he can operate into us through suffering. That's how you do it. That's how you do it. You go as I did, and you don't like a thing, and you see it like that, and I don't like it. Wait a minute, God, you're in this thing. Now I go speak a word of faith, and you're getting this out, and you're getting this out of it. Sometimes it's healing, speaking about the faith. It comes through. And even before that's done, we have the resolution inside ourselves. We've spoken the word of faith, inside ourselves we have it. And then out in some form comes the substance. That's turning suffering into glory. That's inside us. So Paul, that second Corinthians has a terrific list, beatings, and imprisonments, and starvings, and fears, miles of light affliction, wow, light affliction, light affliction, wow. Because inside it turned light, because it was God's suffering. And Paul says that, you see. In Colossians, for instance, he uses that expression, which we often quote. You know it, but I'm quoting, or more sensual reading it. Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, Colossians 1, 24, and fill up that which is of the afflictions of Christ. That is, now this is suffering for others. This is the intercession. I rejoice in my sufferings for you, sufferings for you. I fill up that which is behind the afflictions of Christ in my flesh, for his body's sake. With the body, of course, which is a church. And he called it, you see, he called Nero's imprisonment, God's imprisonment. That's strong stuff. I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, Ephesians 4. I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord. He wasn't in prison, he was the prisoner of Nero. He didn't say that. He's God's Nero. He's God's Nero, which means prison. Out of prison, of course, came the prison of the bishops. It's through the prison we get the glory of Ephesians, of course. But, see, he, so he called it the prisoner of the Lord. So he resolved it every time, inwardly. It isn't, it isn't a Roman jail. It's God's prison. And the prison, it's a wonderful phrase. Prisoner of the Lord, isn't it? When he went through in that jail and chained up, chained up that fellow soldier and all that sort of stuff. And Peter called it, in 1 Peter, he calls your suffering the suffering of Christ, which is a good phrase. Oh, I don't know. Yes, 1 Peter 4, 13. Rejoice is what you have to take for Christ's sufferings. Christ's sufferings. You see, I said yesterday, that's, that is the, the manifest tragedy of the Holocaust. Because there may have been some precious, but we don't have anybody who gloried in dying. They howled in their dying. They didn't know the sufferings of Christ. They didn't know Christ as they, because they didn't know Christ. So the poor people, both believers in God, Jews and all that, they didn't know that this is part of Christ. They were sharing in a martyrdom in Christ. So they went howling to the gas chamber. And we blame Hitler. No, blame their unbelief. Don't blame Hitler. Blame the Jews' unbelief. They should know better. Poor things don't know better. We do know better. There may be some, we don't know, precious people who did go praising. We don't know among all those masses. Please God, there probably were some. That's, that's, you see, that's the sufferings of Christ. It wasn't Christ. It was people beating, beating him about. He said, this is the afflictions of Christ. Yes. So that's this, this temptation, which is a difficult word, because his word is trial, really. Temptation is the more, the personal type. Trial is more the afflictions. It hit us all all the time. They're both the same word, really, and they produce sufferings. I suggested that the danger of temptation is mistaking temptation for sin, because Satan, temptation is a first response. A first response isn't sin. The ultimate response is sin. And the church mistakes the first response for the ultimate response. If I'm a quick person, I'm quick. I'm very quick. Oh, I can't even bend over. Oh, I bother, I drop that thing. Now, that bothers me. It's just a temptation. But I don't like it. Oh, I got to bend down and get that. Oh, I made that, my typing isn't exactly perfect. Oh, I made that mistake in my, oh bother, I made a mistake again. That's not a sin. It's a temptation. I mean, it's fine. I don't like it. I don't want it. Shouldn't be. That's not a sin. That's the importance of James 1 in those two verses. You're drawn to my desires, my desires, I type well, like I thought Fred did until I know better now. But you see, my bad typing. I drop things, I'm very quick. Where's that thing? I've lost it. Where is it? I've lost it. Bother. Bother isn't sin. I told you my famous little story a year or so ago, a lady I know very well, a very sharp lady, a Christian lady in Tallahassee, knows the Lord, but she's very sharp. She said, Norman, she says, when somebody works me up, I say, damn, you would hit him over the head. Is that sin? I said, the dam's okay, hitting you in the head just goes too far. That's the point. You can't help the dam, but you can help the head. And that's the, James says, desire, you're drawn, of course you're drawn, we're full of desires, we're made of fire, we're just made of passion. But it comes out, for some you're too slow, for some you're too quick, some are too positive, some too negative, all sorts. Some have quick sex responses, some don't. Some have pride responses, some have vanity responses. All different, millions of types. Okay, we all get them, because we're made to be human on every level, on the physical, on the soul, emotional, of course we are. Now, drawn away, and I am responding a little bit. That's not sin. Temptation, wouldn't be temptation, I didn't respond. Jesus tempted. Tempted means you feel something, otherwise it's not temptation. Don't make me feel I'd like to do that, otherwise it's not temptation, of course. Temptation makes me feel like to do it, or maybe begin to do it. Oh, I shouldn't do that, I shouldn't say that. The first reaction, first reaction, that's not sin. Now, mainly we condemn, because we have those reactions and we think they're not sin. Fourteen, the next verse says, when thus love has conceded, conceded is adultery. And it's very interesting, you know, in the very same letter in James 4, Paul calls sin adultery. He says you're adulterous, because that means I've married that thing, I'm meant to do it. I've gone into an affair with that thing, and I'm meant to tell that lie, and I'm meant to commit that thing, that sin. That's why sin is rare, but it is there, and sometimes it comes, occasionally. If I've really done it, then you go to 1 John 1, 9. Oh, I've confessed your sin, you admit you did it. But you don't admit a temptation. You admit you did it. You look, it's very rare you really feel alive. You don't live, I hope you don't live committing adultery. It's a joke to us to talk like that. We don't do that kind of thing. We don't live that kind of life. But you may be tempted. Temptation is okay. You get it if you're a live person, it depends what kind of life you have, what kind of response you have, different responses. They're okay. Don't mistake the first response for sin. It is a kind of response. Oh, that irritates me. I don't like that. That's okay. Depends what you do with it. So the first response shows you're tempted. The second response, a hit over the head, becomes a sin. We don't too often do that one. But that's a sin. And there's a great release there. Poor precious people in churches, all over the place, think they've sinned all the way a year down, because they felt hate or felt lust or said a sharp word or something. See, they felt they've sinned. They haven't sinned unless they meant to do it. Sin has behind it, adultery has a choice, an affair has a choice. I mean to do that. It isn't a sin. And you do it. That's a sin. Therefore, the first response isn't a sin. Oh, I don't like the worry and fuss. That's okay. It's a good practice. It says, wait, that's Satan getting at me, making me forget who I am. It's what you said yesterday. I forget who I am for a moment. I always am. When I see materialism is real, I'm forgetting. It's a bunch of atoms, really. It's so down, it's a disability. That's all it is. When I look at it, it's like wooden walls. Well, that's not a sin to look at it like wooden walls and operate. It would be if I lived on that. My sorrow was because this place, my attitude, this is where I belong. And that would become a sin. You know what I mean, when you live in the material. So we must accept. So it isn't wrong to be affected by the material. Of course, we live that way. And disturbed by the material. Perplexed. Paul didn't see. Perplexed. Wasn't perplexed. I don't know what. Well, I'm not despair. Here's a way through. Cast downs. We're strong. Cast down. Oh, I'm down. Paul didn't sin. This is part of the way. Wait a minute. It's okay. But sin is, the Hebrews, they continued in it. The unbelievers, they beat Moses up. It wasn't they complained. It wasn't they complained there was no more manna, no water. So they beat him up. Then it becomes sin. Let's get back to Egypt. Let's get this Moses out, get back to Egypt. That becomes sin. Sin is when you purpose to do it, which we don't often do that by the grace of God. If you do, then you get the remedy. You have to have some temporary guilt. No condemnation. You have guilt, then the condemnation goes in the blood of Christ. Faithfulness to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from our righteousness, cleanse you from the sense of being wrong. The Hebrews 11 blood is not from the sins. It's from the consciousness of sins. How much blood can cleanse your consciousness from dead works? That's false. That consciousness of dead works. But so much of our conscience is a false one. Consciousness of temptation isn't sin. Most of us live in sin because we think we shouldn't have felt angry. I shouldn't have done so. Don't say that. That's the wrong conscience. That's okay. But if you did the angry thing, or if you really did it, then your friend is okay. Then you move in the okayness. That's this life. So I'm saying there's a great release where we can learn to subdivide between temptation, which does mean some response, and the sin which means I go around you and do it. Sin is a marriage and adultery which abuses a child called sin. That's another matter. And so life is consistent suffering, which is the only way to glory. So I've always been impressed by billions. When you get the habit, you understand, you get it. You don't say I shouldn't have it. Of course I get it. That's what we got. We got to know. Of course we get it. But then we know gradually how to resolve it all the time. It's hardly back to Christ is in with sin, Christ made it, and Christ is in it. And you turn it from Satan pulling you off a bit, back to who you really are. So you're very good last night when you say Satan pulled you off. It is Satan universal. All right, the question is if Satan is a created being, how can he be an omnipresent spirit and dwell everybody as God? Because I prefer Bible interpretations to their interpretations. And the Bible says several things. The Bible says in 2 Corinthians 4, you know, in whom the God of this world, he's called God, the God of this world. That's 2 Corinthians 4. Oh, my eyes again. Sorry. Oh, verse 4, of course. In whom the God of this world. Therefore he has a universal output in this world. And then he's called a universal spirit, because he's leveled up in 1 John 1 to the spirit. No difference. 1 John 4 says, 1 John 4, 6 says, we are of God. He that knoweth God heareth us. He that is not of God heareth not us. Here, by the way, these spirits of truth and these spirits of error. He's leveled up with the Holy Spirit. So I prefer the Bible to the evangelical twists and turns. The Bible levels you up as the same level of spirit as the Holy Spirit. And then when you finally go back to Ephesians 2, and this I usually try to shut people up, when they say, well, he's a local. He can't beat everybody in the same sense as God can't beat. That's what they say. You can't say Satan's in you the same way as the Holy Spirit's in you. Oh, I said, what does Ephesians 2 say? Among whom, where in the time past, verse 1 to verse 2, chapter 2, he walked according to the course of this world, according to the principle of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience. Well, all the disobedience, the whole world's disobedience. The whole world's taught disobedience. So the spirit has worked and works in all humanity, because all humanity is disobedient. They usually say, they shut up. They can't answer that. So the Bible is saying, level them up as a spirit with the Holy Spirit, and level them up as a universal spirit in the spirits of all the unrelenting people. That should be enough. And when you add to that such statements as Paul, Jesus said, you, your father, devil, and lust of your father you do, he must be inside of them. If we're doing, our lust is inside us. If he's doing his lust in you, he's doing his lust by our lust. So if I'm the father of the devil, it means he must be operating his lust by my lust. He must be inside me. So the Bible's clear as can be, these different, putting these scriptures together. And there's a prince of the power of the air. It's a strange phrase. Means his power apparently is limited to our atmosphere, including us, I suppose that means. He's called this same scripture, the prince of the power of the air. Well, we take the air these days, don't they? It goes a certain element up, doesn't it? And then we're in this sort of element. And air is in everything. So all those things make it simple and plain to me. And then Jesus said, I quote you this morning, John 14, the prince of this world cometh and hath nothing in me. Therefore, it can be in Jesus. The prince, that's John 14. The prince of this world cometh and hath nothing in me. Means he could have something in him. If Jesus finds this person in him, and then says it's Jesus, Satan entered into him at the supper table. Entered into him. So it's an inner person. So it's just, to my mind, this silly fundamental fiddle stuff, the kind of fiddle things into bits and pieces. And says, oh, he's very local. Well, he's pretty good local. He's local enough to contain us all. And we hear him. If I read your Bible now, that's all I've got to say. Just let me, lumping it on me instead of yourself. We all quote from this last chapter of Genesis. God meant it. Means he did it. He meant it. He meant that the effects will be good. He meant Satan's evil to be good by preparing us for salvation. He didn't do it. No difference there. So God means an evil. He didn't do it, but he means, because he's God, very well, I mean that evil for good purposes. That's the wonder of it. He turned the Calvary into resurrection. He didn't do the Calvary. Satan did the Calvary. So if I get the word, an empty word means. He didn't say God did that for good. They did it. And they learned evil by that. That's why they found their repentance, those other children of Jacob. It worked in them. You can see, prove it too. It worked in them. They saw that they'd done evil in lying about Joseph and selling him and all that. So God didn't, but he meant it beautifully. And then that's the glory, that God means that thing and produced the whole area for the children of Israel to go into Egypt and become a great nation and all that. And it says, the cup which my father had given me. He gave the cup. The cup wasn't the father's. It was Satan's cup. God gave it. God gives us Satan. He's God's Satan. He must be. Otherwise you've got something that isn't God. He must be the reverse form of God. God gives it to you, but he's not the Satan. He gives us something which is in its freedom, taken the form of him and made it the misused form which he never was, the fire form, the Satan form. So I don't personally get difficult in that way. But parents and folks do get difficult in that way. As if God actually did the thing. Well, we know that. I can't take that. We know that. That's why it boils when people call their sins mistakes. They know they aren't mistakes. They meant them. And this poor world gets out of it facing sin by saying it's a mistake. It stirs me. It's like they're lying and they know they're lying. They know they're lying. But we don't want to say we're liars. So if a person says, God was responsible, then I know they know. I know they know he isn't. If it's a murder or adultery or a lie, they know there was God didn't do that. They know it. And it's a hypocrisy to pretend that God did that. He meant it. He meant you to be yourself. He must give freedom. That's his answer. The whole answer to the awe and tragedy of the world's freedom. There must be freedom. But suffering isn't in the in the utter effects. It's very hard, seriously, terrible famines and things. Suffering isn't in the utter effects. How I take it? And the whole string of promises in farms for those in famine that they'll be fed. God knows those who die of famine. He knows what's inside them. That's not to judge. But suffering isn't in the utter. Suffering is how I take it. But of course the world doesn't see that. So they call it suffering or the poor this or the poor that. I know that because we had the leprosy business. We began to rescue lepers who just left to die in their villages in the early days in the Congo. One of our vigorous wonderful women gathered about a thousand of them together. But the point wasn't that they would complain, oh I'm neglected and nobody cares and poor things. They would left the star with their toes off and noses off and all this leprosy business. But when they found Jesus, they said, oh we've got life, we're going to live. And they'd leap off with their name, leap off to tell other people they've got life. Life was inside. They were still lepers with no toes and no this and no that. But they got life, got Jesus in their mortal, their disturbed body. Life, suffering isn't in the body. It's inside us. How we take it, our whole key, we know how to take now. How to start suffering and turn it around. We start suffering. So I turn, if people really try to justify that God did the thing, I think you know better. If it's justifying some evil thing and God did it. No, he meant it. Meaning he meant it, he meant it and he meant you to be free. As you're free you did it and if you go there you'll end in damnation, maybe, but he'll turn it into his purposes. I've of course discussed a bit, but because hardening is the process in me of a God operates, he leaves me free to operate my me form as it is. And when my me form goes disobedient it gets hardened and that's God hardly, because it's God's Satan anyhow. I mean, um, see, um, we're, we're a person. Now we're governed by Satan. Now Pharaoh's governed by Satan, but the word of God comes to Pharaoh through Moses. And the word came again, come on Moses, come on Pharaoh, listen, come. Now then, Moses governed by, Pharaoh governed by Satan says, no, I'll go Satan's way. I'm not going to go that way. I'm not going to let you go, lose you. I will, I'll go Satan's way. It shows that's the hardening. The hardening is God confirming in us what our situation is. And if it's a Satan situation, then it's God's Satan if you like it. That's the hardness. It doesn't mean God put the hardness in you, of course, because you're a free person. But, uh, uh, it, it, it gives God his final sovereignty. It is, if you go that way, and it's, it's, God damns you. Yes, it's you. But it is in the end, the ultimate authority of God. And you damn yourself and God damns you. And Pharaoh couldn't find the penance, Athor couldn't find the penance. He threw it out. He threw out his promises. And he couldn't find the penance. He hardened. Athor hardened himself, hardened himself, hardened himself, and sold his birthrights for better pottage and all that stuff. Sold himself, hardened himself, hardened himself. But he's, we're all God's, he's God's devil, he's God's sword and everything else. And so, in that sense, it's God confirming in you what you are. And, uh, I think we're meant to see it as God, the absoluteness of God. And the Spirit eye can, can reinterpret that and say, of course, it is really, I did it, and God's confirming what I did. But in the end, it is God. It is God. It's God's hell as well as God's heaven. So Romans, Romans 9 gets you back, it is God. Romans 10 says, whosoever shall call the Lord shall be saved. Romans 10 balances Romans 9, which says, God hardened Pharaoh's heart, God did so and so. The pot is what God made it and so on. Romans 10 says, whosoever shall call, that the two, that we live by this paradox, this dialectic, the paradox, you make the two work together, that life is paradox. Which is the, um, Jesus becoming man and taking our sins, this paradox. How does, how does a universal God become a human being? It's ridiculous. It's a paradox. You have to see things happen, which I believe many happen. This is what, so we move in the belief. That's all. Norman, would you say possibly that God has fixed it so that if we continue in sin like Pharaoh, we become hardened so that we do worse things as Pharaoh did. So hopefully they'll shock us when we see the worst things we've done. Thank you. Yes. That is Romans 1. Romans 1 says we all start with the basic knowledge, but we refuse that knowledge. We went into our imagination and God hardened us until we went into the sin of sin in order, finally, to shock us. Then the law comes to shock us. See Romans 1 starts up by saying, um, uh, uh, uh, uh, oh, I'm looking at the wrong chapter again. Um, uh, oh, the invisible things of God from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things which are made, even his eternal power and God, so without excuse, because when they knew God, because they knew God, everybody knows God. Somebody said, yes, it's the devil who said that, the fool has said in his heart, God knows. Here it says, uh, in the creation, everybody knows God. When they knew God, they glorified him, but not here, freedom comes in. They went thankful, and their foolish heart, there's this self-pride taken in and came up with the imagination to make, make, make images and, uh, and, uh, all this business. And, uh, uh, it goes on and says, who, who changes the law of God, changed it into, into a corruptible man, a beast, into flesh, which we could follow, and go into following the flesh, then making God of flesh, then we can do our flesh stuff. And they gave us the unpleased, it goes worse into this horrible sodomy and all this, what they, it's a disgraceful way they use the word gay, what is vital, vile scene, and we never call it sodomy. It's a shame, it's a shame, and our papers never talk about sodomy, they just say it's, it's the, it's the, uh, homosexuality. They won't use God's word. Of course, the religious world doesn't want to, because you're called to be sodomy, but it gets saved, you're sodomy, people get burned into hell in sodomy. We don't call it these things, we'd better get back to the things. Here it is, it gives them over, these things, until we, it says, finally, we, we, we justify, it says, therefore, knowing the judgment of God, at the end of this chapter, those commutes, which are things, uh, are worthy, just not only do, but to have, to have pleasure in the end that do them. Now it's called perversion. That's what is gay sodomy. You, a whole list of things you hear, all sins, and rebellions, and hates, and fears, and lusts, who, knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, death, of course, everlasting death, death is selfhood in itself, hell conditions, it isn't in the physical. Not only do they say, but have pleasure in the end that do them. That's the finality of Romans 1. So you see, there is, there are those which, um, have been caught up by Satan. We chose to be, we really, of course, we've been automatically caught up from the fall, caught up by Satan. Satan calls us, see, this way, see flesh, and delight in flesh, and enlarge flesh, and deny the existence of God, and so on. And so we become slaves. At the mercy of God, of course, he's, uh, he changes our slavery. He took that slavery on himself, and gives us his slavery back. But there is that element in which we have responded. There is that element in which we've responded. Otherwise we're not free people. And then Romans 10, whosoever call on the Lord shall be saved. Call on the Lord. So there is that in me which can call on the Lord. And so Jesus said in John 3, um, this, I don't condemn the world, this is the condemnation. The lights come into the world, I've saved the world. As lights come into the world, we reject the light. Men love darkness. Loving darkness is loving self, of course. I've got my own self, my own weight, I prefer to risk that. I love, that's my darkness, my self. Self for self, Satan is darkness. Self for self, it's darkness, Satan. I love that. I, I'm not going to risk that. So I, I, I, I hate the light. But the others come to the light, which means I'm wrong. My wrong can be shown. And then I find the content, of course, the justification. So there is a, I can't get away from the, an element, ultimate element of free, we are free people. I like Billy Graham, when that man has the early morning eight o'clock chalky quarrels with you all, in the eight o'clock TV news, I don't listen to him, my sanity hears him. He, he's always getting you up in choir. He goes, Billy Graham has said, what about going to hell? But he said, only those who, only those who choose will go. He's right. Only those who choose will go. I'm glad he said that. So I don't know where we're getting on this, but I can't hear. About living in the unbroken relationship to God, that's when, when we have let go of, as you said, self for self, and allowing Christ to live in us as well. What verse is that? I haven't been summing through my Bible, I've come to freedom from sin, Romans 6, because this is William's Bible. For by the death he died, he once for all ended his relation to sin, and by the life he now is living, he lives in unbroken relationship to God. Once he's let go of the self for self, Satan couldn't be able to touch him. There's a temptation, but it wouldn't be the thought. It's really that we're all just touching on the...