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CORE Evangelism School

A God Worth Knowing

Dee Casper

01 The God Who Hears and Knows

02 The Problem of Evil: Does God Care?

03 The Faith of Jesus

04 Are We In This Thing Alone?

05 A New Covenant Experience

06 Bad Religion

07 The Reminder of Your Value

09 A Matter of Life or Death

10 Unquenchable Love

12 A God Who is Always on Time

13 The Gospel in Types and Symbols

15 Last Church Standing

16 An Abundant Life

18 Why God Won’t Leave

19 Jesus Understands

17 A Voice of Reason

14 The Coming Crisis

08 Building a House for My Wife

11 A New Birth

It's a privilege to have you here with us once again.

We are delighted and honored to have you in our midst, and we're going to be covering the topic this evening of bad religion.

And so I'd like to kind of give a definition of that after we pray and give kind of a big picture view here.

So let's start with the word of prayer and then we'll begin.

Sweet Jesus, thank you for the privilege to pray.

Thank you that I believe you have a blessing for us this evening and though it's a difficult topic to cover, Lord, I know that this is your work and it is your word, so I pray that your word would do what it does best, and that is inform your people and transform your people.

And we ask this now in Jesus' name, Amen.

So in our second evening together, we address this topic of the great controversy, the problem of evil, and what we're gonna be covering today is kind of building on that framework and showing how that's affecting us even in current day and how the trajectory from that original fall of Lucifer is leading us to this very point in our history.

And we're also going to look at how some of these things we're going to learn tonight can actually affect our personal walks with God.

So there should be some very practical lessons, some prophetic lessons, and also kind of establishing some other issues here.

But we're told in 1 John 4 and verse 8 that God is love.

It says, he who does not love does not know God, for God is love.

And skipping to verse 16 of 1 John 4, and we have known and believed the love that God has for us.

This is 1 of the most important things you can do in your entire life, to know and believe the love that God has for you.

God is love, it says, and he who abides in love abides in God and God in him.

So the Bible is clearly stating that God is love.

Now, 1 Corinthians 13 gives us a picture of what that looks like in a practical sense.

This, if you were to replace the word love with the word God, you would learn about his character in these verses.

That God suffers long and is kind, that he does not envy, that he does not parade himself, is not puffed up, does not behave rudely, he does not seek his own, he is not provoked, he thinks no evil, he does not rejoice in iniquity but rejoices in the truth, he bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things." This is what the Bible teaches us about the character of God.

So it explains how God does life and God lives in an atmosphere of complete other-centered love.

This is the way that God does life, other- centered love.

Selfishness is nowhere to be seen in his life, in his teachings, or in his example.

And Jesus tells us later in his life that if you've seen me, you've seen the Father.

He flew in the face of norms and expectations of the world around him.

But from the very beginning of the rebellion, Satan has sought to portray God as being selfish.

He's tried to make people think that God is selfish, that he's not loving, or the very source of love itself.

But the interesting thing is he does this while at the same time alluring other people to live for themselves and live by his kingdom principle.

Satan's kingdom principle is self first, it's selfishness.

And the 2 big warring principles of this war between good and evil are love and selfishness.

This truly is the bedrock of this conflict, love and selfishness.

And Satan has always had a storefront on earth that's propagating, that is sharing his idea of putting self first.

Do you, worry about you, focus only on you, don't worry about other people.

And it's trying to influence the entire world with this teachings and example, continuing Satan's propaganda campaign that's been going strong since his fall.

And in a prophetic sense, later at the close of Earth's history, we're told that this very same objective is being basically carried out by systems.

But let's pan back and see how we got here.

There's a big picture narrative that we're living in.

In Ezekiel chapter 28, we read this in our second night together, but I want you to look at things specifically that we've underlined.

We didn't actually read these first verses in that chapter.

It says to say things to the Prince of Tyre, which is really talking about the source of evil behind the Prince of Tyre.

It says, because your heart is lifted up and you say I am a God and I sit in the midst of gods yet you're a man and not a God though you set your heart as the heart of a God." In verse 4, with your wisdom and your understanding you've gained riches for yourself and gathered gold and silver into your treasuries.

By your great wisdom and trade, you've increased your riches and your heart is lifted up because of your riches.

So he's seeking for gain, he's seeking for self-focus.

This is speaking of Lucifer, but this philosophy is going to continue on into the systems on earth.

So corrupting their prosperity, corrupting their wisdom, okay?

And by the iniquity of your trading, if you remember in our second message together, Satan was trafficking lies in heaven.

He was a gorgeous angel to begin with, but he started to be filled with pride and he was soliciting, he was trafficking amongst the other angels, trying to get them to believe things about God that were not true.

Remember, 1 third of the angels fell as a result of this traffic campaign, this trafficking, this trading that was going on.

It continues saying, now going to Isaiah chapter 14, we're just looking at a particular type of language that's used by Lucifer, And you see the self-focus that's in these verses.

It continues in Isaiah chapter 14, says how you were fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning, how you were cut down to the ground, you who weaken the nations.

For you have said in your heart, I will ascend into heaven.

I will exalt my throne above the stars of God above the other angels.

I will sit on the mount of the congregation on the farthest side to the north.

I will ascend above the heights of the clouds.

I will be like the Most High." He had selfish upward ambitions and wants to be above everyone else and wants people taking orders from him.

He wants even God himself to take orders from him.

And Pride at its very base level is selfishness.

This spirit of selfishness and self-exaltation, pride, envy, and striving for advancement is a spirit that originates from Lucifer and as we'll see is 1 of the crowning traits of the beast powers in the prophetic books of Daniel and Revelation.

But guys, this cannot be the spirit that rules the people of God.

We desperately need Jesus and His spirit of humility, gentleness, and unselfishness, and a willingness to be overlooked and unappreciated.

But what was heaven's reaction to Lucifer's fall?

I want to go back to a text that we looked at again in our second night together in Luke chapter 10.

Jesus sends out 70 missionaries to preach the gospel, to heal the sick, to cleanse the lepers, to do all these wonderful miracles.

And they come back and say, Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name.

They kind of get excited about the fact that they've got authority over the powers of darkness.

And he said to them, I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.

And this is not the initial response you would expect to see.

You'd expect to get a high-five from Jesus, way to beat the bad guys, fellas.

And he says, behold, I give you authority to trample on serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you.

But nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven.

In another place, Jesus makes a statement that the last shall be first and the first shall be last.

This idea of putting others first, not being excited that you've got power or authority, right?

So apparently there are traces of Lucifer's spirit in the response of the disciples when they gain victory over the demons and Jesus is saying, pump the brakes fellas, Be careful.

This is not a way of thinking that you want to cherish.

But we also made a point on our second night together that what's implied here is that Jesus is still heartbroken over the reality that someone who was a part of his family defected, rebelled, and destroyed a third of the family tree.

Because remember, Jesus in John chapter 1 and Colossians chapter 1 is the creator of all things, of all life.

And when you have someone that you love and you've created who's gone crazy, right, just gone off the rails and is wreaking havoc, imagine as a parent seeing your children do things that are destructive and terrible and you struggle.

Series

A God Worth Knowing

06 Bad Religion

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

Antichrist: The One You've Never Known

Antichrist, Episode 6: Revealed

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A God Worth Knowing

14 The Coming Crisis

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Restoration 2025: Revelation Speaks Life

Babylon is Fallen

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How Heaven’s War Became Ours

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What If I Fail?

52m

Speak it in Love

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Jesus On Prophecy

Babylon the Fall and the Call

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Religion, Power, and the Future of America

What Church Would Jesus Join Today?

42m

The Power of the 3 Angels Messages

The Collapse of Confusion: 2nd Angels Message

1h 22m

The Two Revelations

1h 24m

The Sanctuary, God's Answer to the Sin Problem

Why Jesus Waits

1h

Emmanuel Institute - Ignite Your Church

Ignite Your Church - Part 8: Evaluating Your Church

1h 1m

Sound Doctrine