Invading the Kingdom of Darkness Soulwinning

Much of what we call modern evangelism today, friends, is nothing more than getting folks to agree with us on a point and then talking them into accepting a poor pitiful Jesus who helplessly stands at the door of their heart, hoping somebody will let him in. I believe I've never seen a time since I've been alive where there are more false converts filling our churches and assuming roles of leadership who are yet unconverted, unchanged, and unregenerated. I don't believe there's many in ministry today who even understand what we're up against when it comes to being a witness of the gospel.

I don't think we realize the battle we are against in the fight in the forces of darkness as we conduct soul winning the last 50 or 60 years of the spiritual declension in our churches and the watering down of the gospel message, making it more palatable to sinful man as cheapened the grace of the gospel of the son of God and filled up hell for all eternity. Men enter the ministry decorated with their academic degrees but deficient as preachers of the gospel and they are both unequipped and unarmed to do battle with the forces of darkness in the work of saving souls. The shallow evangelism of our hour has made its countless false converts who rest on false bottoms of carnal security and have a good opinion of themselves, yet when they die they die in their sins and open their eyes in a burning hell.

Ninety percent of the preaching today starts off where Charles Finney left off and we tell folks they can decide to become a Christian anytime they want to. You make yourself a Christian, it's entirely in your power. Listen friends, in our day we've committed two crimes within the church for we have both shrunken God down to man's size and have taken salvation out of the hands of God and placed it in the hands of men.

We need strong weapons of warfare to attack the citadel of Satan and invade the kingdom of darkness for the apostle Paul tells us for we wrestle not against flesh and blood but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. I believe friends that if anybody's going to get saved today we better re-examine what the gospel is and who our enemy is and what we're really up against when it comes to saving lost souls by recovering lost sinners to God because if we're going to have any real impact on eternity in the salvation of a lost soul then we must be prepared to arm ourselves with power from on high and garrison ourselves in with the great doctrines of the gospel of former days and go out and hunt down sinners in highways and hedges and compel them to come in by proactively invading the kingdom of darkness. Listen friends a sinner is nothing more than a captive of satan a lost sinner is a child of the devil and in his kingdom serving him in that kingdom of darkness you can sugarcoat it all you want to today in our politically correct and perverse society but I will call a spade a spade when it comes to dealing with sinners and storming the gates of hell and effectual soul winning.

My message tonight is entitled invading the kingdom of darkness soul winning. Turn in your bibles friends to the gospel of Matthew in chapter 12. We'll take a look at how locked up in bondage a lost soul really is.

I want to read you the words of Christ Jesus as he describes how sinners are in bondage to a force more powerful than they. Look at verse 29. Let me read that to us at this time.

Or else how can one enter into a strong man's house and spoil his goods except he first bind the strong man and then he will spoil his house. Here in our text friends we see what we're up against as we battle the forces of darkness in gospel ministry as we labor to bring sinners into subjection to Christ by having them throw down their shotguns of rebellion and submit to a sovereign king for we cannot recover lost sinners to God without invading the kingdom of darkness by wielding the doctrines of the gospel as a two-edged sword. Listen to me friends the human heart is a stronghold of resistance to God and all things holy.

The human heart is a stronghold kept by the strong man who is satan and the evil one will do all he can to keep his goods in peace. The false peace of a lost sinner is truly amazing. I was watching tv years ago back when I had a tv and at the time I was watching an interview with a rock and roll legend as as he was being interviewed by a journalist.

This rock and roll star was an old man and as he sat in his chair his legs were crossed and his hands were folded and he acted as that as if he was at complete peace with himself in the world. I never saw a man so at peace with himself so at peace with the world but the trouble was this man lived like the devil and had lived like the devil all his life but he still had a peace keeping him secure. Well that's a good example of the false peace that satan gives to his subjects so he can keep his goods in peace.

Listen friends the old time gospel was designed to storm the gates of hell and invade the kingdom of darkness and to spoil the devil's palace and to turn sinners from darkness to light. Somehow along the way we have reduced the gospel to a pat formula whereby we try to get people to agree to a bible verse and talk them into making a decision for Jesus and we call that the gospel of the bible but our gospel today does not hold a candle to the one that was used by men of former days when it had power to save. Today many pastors fear their congregations, fear their deacons and are timid in the pulpit and preach smooth encouraging messages to occupy these overgrown babies who should be sitting in the nursery.

We fear man more than God today but men like John Wesley and George Whitefield shook Great Britain for God because they did not fear man. In fact Wesley would often say give me 100 men who fear nothing but God and hate nothing but sin and I will shake the gates of hell and he did just that friends. I remember a time where you could go into a church in this country years ago and experience the power of God in a meeting.

Why was that? I believe that about 50 or 60 years ago we still had a preponderance of preachers who knew the gospel better than we do today and they preached the old doctrines of ruin, redemption, repentance and regeneration. They preached up the cross and the bloody savior who died there. They weren't afraid to call sin black and hell hot and warned sinners not to go there.

They made sure that you knew you had a duty to repent or go to hell and that you could not enter the kingdom of heaven unless you were washed in the blood and born from above. They knew the battle they were up against. Men like Mordecai Ham preached the absolute lordship of Jesus Christ and man's duty of repentance and Ham always spoke about the gospel ministry as a battle.

In fact his autobiography is called 50 years on the battlefront with Christ. But we don't approach evangelism today with the mindset of it being a battle, but it is friends. The sinner's heart is a fortress.

It is fortified and the devil will do everything in his power to keep his goods in peace. That old devil is wily. That old devil is cunning.

He knows human nature better than we do. He knows all the tricks in his dirty black book to keep a lost sinner in his kingdom as his subject. The devil blinds a person to the truths of the gospel.

My bible declares if our gospel be hid it is hid to them that are lost in whom the god of this world has 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. Listen friends how many of you have tried to witness to folks and all your face is resistance. Many of you know how hard the sinner's heart is and how against God it stands its ground.

A man's nothing more than a guilty rebel who's in treason against the sovereign. A man has broken God's law time and time again to the degree that his sins stack up high as a mountain before him but he feels no conviction of his sins because the strong man guards his goods by blinding him to sin. By giving him a peace that has its roots in the very blackness of hell and a lost sinner makes one move to try to desert the camp of the devil.

Why then all the resources of hell will emerge to thwart that sinner from leaving the kingdom of darkness where he's right at home in love with his sins sitting in his pig pen and at peace with the world. But if we fail to preach the full counsel of God and awaken men to their lost condition by shutting them up to the holy law of God and showing them their complete dependence upon God for salvation then we are merely trying to put out a raging fire with a water pistol and making little headway. Too many stand in our pulpits who don't have a clue how to point a poor sinner to Christ savingly rather God has an indictment against many of them.

Thus saith the Lord they have healed also the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly saying peace peace when there is not peace. Listen friends there is no peace to the wicked but a false peace from the devil. We must realize our foe and not underestimate his resources.

We need the almighty power of God today as we preach the gospel to invade the kingdom of darkness to bring it down to set the captives loose and reconcile them back to God through Jesus Christ the conquering king for when a stronger than he shall come upon him and overcome him he take it from him all his armor wherein he trusted and divided his spools for the gospel is mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalted itself against the knowledge of God and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. Listen friends when the gospel is preached in all its colors and it's all its great doctrines are held up and honored then the spirit of God will attend his word with power and all the fortified places of the devil will be spoiled the goods are no longer in a false peace but the sinners then awaken to his great danger of his lost position outside of Christ he trembles at the thunderings of Sinai and the law which he has continually broken all his life and he realizes that the sentencing of the law must be carried out by just judge and that means hell for the sinner unless he repents for no one will leave the kingdom of darkness on their own because they are comfortable in their pig pens of sins and they rest in a false peace of carnal security the strong man holds them there in his palace they are willing subjects to his kingdom of darkness listen friends preaching that does not aim to tear down these strongholds will never set the captives free from the enemy of their souls the apostle Paul knew his enemy and he declared but we preached in the demonstration of the spirit and of power old-time preachers got better results than us today because they preached up the doctrines the doctrine of the depravity of the human heart that man was born under a curse and enters this world with a rude nature with a bent toward sin that man drinks iniquity like it's water and hates God and all things holy but we don't upset folks today with our preaching because it doesn't upset the devil his goods are safe and in peace but the weapons of our warfare are not carnal only the blood of Christ can wash away your sin it's not you accepting Jesus friend as it is Jesus accepting you a guilty rebel stealing his sins uh will not be allowed in the holy kingdom of God why that's anarchy a sinner's heart must be uncovered by sound preaching and the spirit's conviction of sin uh Mordecai Ham said that the first two weeks he was in a meeting in a town he'd spent all his time preaching preaching the bark off a hardened church members dead in sin he stripped them with his preaching of the utter lordship of Jesus Christ and man's utter duty of repentance from sin and many would cry out uh we will not have this man reign over us uh but that's why Mordecai Ham faced such opposition he was pistol whipped he was attacked he was run over with a car he was taken by a mob to be uh tarred and feathered and hung but that's also why Mordecai Ham had over 200,000 souls come to Christ during his 50-year gospel battle listen friends the devil sits in our sanctuaries today with his legs crossed and his hands folded and he smiles in satisfaction at our weak and anemic preaching he laughs at what we call the gospel today for he knows his goods are saved his goods are in pieces as long as we keep doing what we are doing and calling it evangelism where is the man who will take the bible and hold it up and stand his ground take the word of god take the god of the word at his word and preach that word unashamedly with the power of god and attack the devil stronghold by invading the kingdom of darkness and go after poor sinners where they are preaching the glorious gospel of the son of god in all its great doctrines and colors to where a sinner is slain awakened and undone and conquered by king jesus the word of god is a rock it's a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces that is the stone cold heart of a sinner it must be shattered only god can take the heart of stone and make it heart of flesh friend and we must show lost sinners today their utter dependence upon the sovereign mercy of god we need a reformation today in our pulpits throughout this land men who are willing to do battle with forces beyond their reach and beyond their control but not fearing man and preaching the glorious truths that have power still to conquer and save for how else can one enter into a strong man's house and spoil his goods except he first find a strong man jesus christ is a conquering redeemer friends who comes to seek and save that which is lost we must urge poor sinners to believe on the lord jesus christ and get under the blood let's take this time now to get on our faces and confess our lack confess our utter impotency in our preaching today let us go to the god the god who has power his spirit has power his gospel has power to save let us pray