Sermon: Our Battle Against Evil Programming!

#1772
Martin G. Collins
Given 13-Jul-24; 61 minutes 2024-07-13

What if, unknowingly, you were programmed to do certain things that, if given a choice, you would not have preferred, wanted, or chosen to do? Well, this is happening to you and me and everyone we know, right now, and it is more widespread than we can even realize. The apostle Paul moaned, "I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing" (Romans 7:19).

Seldom do people realize that the tasty appearance of an unnatural-looking and pretty odorless foods like cotton candy and suckers owe their attractive, incentivized properties to classical conditioning. If one had never tasted these so-called foods, the objects would probably not look tasty. For example, the sight of a colorful lollipop may just as well be that of a metal model car. The same holds true for other incentivized things such as the ashtray for the smoker or the bottle for the drinker.

Our human thoughts can be manipulated and/or replaced. We can replace thoughts; sometimes these thoughts are subconscious, with good or evil. Basically, we can be programmed, conditioned, or brainwashed in a good or bad way. Conditioning is a method of adapting, modifying, or molding the mind to conform to an accepted cultural and/or political behavior, modifying so that an act or response previously associated with one stimulus becomes associated with an entirely different one.

Are we being conditioned by the news media with its continuous daily coverage of violence in our streets and wars around the globe? Satan influences society to condition or program people to sin, primarily through the media, through advertising, and entertainment, and by government agencies through public education and military service. Today, children learn violence from abuse and violence in the home. And most prevalently, both adults and children learn it from violence as entertainment on the Internet, on TV, in the movies, and in interactive video games.

To better understand Satan's and his followers efforts to program the human mind against God's way of life, we are going to look at one of the most successful behavior modifications: the effect and results of violence. I am going to use examples of behavior modification that lead to violence to show how thoroughly people can be programmed to commit other sins without even realizing it.

Killing requires training because there is a built-in aversion to killing one's own kind. Now, let us look at a distressing example of how the military conditions soldiers. In his article titled "Trained To Kill," published in Christianity Today on August 10th, 1998, Lieutenant Colonel David Grossman, a military expert on the psychology of killing, explained how the media conditions kids to kill. (Throughout this sermon, I will be reading excerpts from his article.) Lieutenant Colonel Grossman writes,

Before retiring from the military, I spent almost a quarter of a century as an army infantry officer and a psychologist, learning and studying how to enable people to kill. Believe me, we are very good at it. But it does not come naturally; you have to be taught to kill. And just as the army is conditioning people to kill, we are indiscriminately doing the same thing to our children, but without the safeguards.

So according to Grossman's article, vasoconstriction (that is a term you probably will never remember again), is the narrowing of the blood vessels and it has in many cases closed down the forebrain. Keep that in mind, the forebrain. Now, physiologically, when those neurons close down, the midbrain takes over, and your reflexes are almost indistinguishable from your dog's. This is really quite interesting in what they can do to close down that forebrain that we have.

Please turn to Genesis 1, verse 11. If you have worked with animals, you have some understanding of the realm of midbrain responses. Within the midbrain, there is a powerful God-given resistance to killing your own kind. It comes inherently to humans as the spirit in man.

Genesis 1:11-12 Then God said, "Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb that yields seed, and the fruit tree that yields fruit according to its kind. [Keep that phrase in mind, according to its kind.], whose seed is in itself, on the earth"; and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, the herb that yields seed according to its kind, and the tree that yields fruit whose seed is in itself according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.

Genesis 1:21 So God created sea creatures and every living thing that moves, with which the waters abounded, according to their kind, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.

Genesis 1:24-26 Then God said, "Let the earth bring forth the living creature according to its kind: cattle and creeping thing and beast of the earth, each according to its kind"; and it was so. And God made the beast of the earth according to its kind, cattle according to its kind, and everything that creeps on the earth according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness [or Our kind, in a sense, you could put that there.]"

Every species, with a few exceptions, has a hardwired resistance to killing its own kind. In territorial and mating battles, when animals with antlers and horns fight one another, they head butt in "a harmless fashion." I am sure it hurts but it is not lethal. But when they fight with other species, they go to the side to gut and gore. Piranhas will turn their fangs on anything but they fight one another with flicks of a tail. Rattlesnakes will bite anything but they wrestle with one another.

Almost every species has this hardwired resistance to killing its own kind. And when we humans are overwhelmed with anger and fear, we slam head-on into that midbrain resistance that generally prevents us from killing. Only sociopaths, who do not have that resistance, lack this innate violence immune system.

Please turn to Proverbs 16. Verses 27 to 30 describe types of evil that seem clever to those who practice them, but which are actually disgusting and destructive. These include general troublemaking, spreading discord, drawing others to join in crime, and conspiring with others to commit crimes.

Proverbs 16:25-30 There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death. The person who labors, labors for himself, for his hungry mouth drives him on. An ungodly man digs up evil, and it is on his lips like a burning fire. A perverse man sows strife, and a whisperer separates the best of friends. [So there are always those who want to pervert others.] A violent man entices his neighbor, and leads him into the way that is not good. He winks his eye to devise perverse things; he purses his lips and brings about evil.

Now, according to The Expositors Bible Dictionary, Volume 5, page 1,011, "Violent people influence others toward violence. The violent person will influence his acquaintances toward violence."

Hamas (you are familiar with that word), the Hebrew word for violent men, in verse 29 refers to sins against society, social injustices, and crimes. Now, in the same verse, the phrase "the way that is not good" seems to mean habits of crime. This principle warns us to stay away from habitual rebels, reprobates, and criminals.

Military history shows that killing is unnatural for most humans. In modern times, the average firing rate was incredibly low. In Civil War battles, the killing potential of the average Civil War regiment was anywhere from 500 to 1000 men per minute. The actual killing rate was only one or two men per minute per regiment according to The Battle Tactics of the American Civil War.

At the Battle of Gettysburg, of the 20,000 muskets picked up from the dead and dying after the battle, 90% were loaded. They had not been fired. 90%! This is an anomaly because it took 95% of their time to load muskets and only 5% to fire. But even more amazingly, of the thousands of loaded muskets, over half had multiple loads in the barrel, one with 23 loads in the barrel, he did not fire a shot, just kept loading and loading because he could not bring himself to shoot or kill somebody else.

In reality, the average man would load his musket and bring it to his shoulder, but he could not bring himself to kill. He would be brave, stand shoulder to shoulder, and do what he was trained to do. But at the moment of truth, he could not bring himself to pull the trigger. And so he lowered the weapon and loaded it again. Of those who did fire, only a tiny percent fired to hit. The vast majority fired over the enemy's head.

During World War II U.S. Army Brigadier General S. L. A. Marshall had a team of researchers study what soldiers did in battle. And for the first time in history, they asked individual soldiers what they did in battle. They discovered that only 15% to 20% of the individual riflemen could bring themselves to fire at an exposed enemy soldier.

That is the reality of the battlefield. Only a small percentage of soldiers are able and willing to participate. Men are willing to die. They are willing to sacrifice themselves for their nation but they are not willing to kill. It is a phenomenal insight into human nature.

But when the military became aware of that, they systematically tried to fix the "problem." From the military perspective, a 15% firing rate among riflemen is like a 15% literacy rate among librarians. And fix it the military did.

By the Korean War, around 55% of the soldiers were willing to fire to kill. And by Vietnam, the rate rose to over 90%. What a shame. The calculated general method in this madness of killing is desensitization. How the military increases the killing rate of soldiers in combat is instructive because our culture is doing the same thing to our children—and we are not even realizing it.

Four training methods militaries use are: brutalization, classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and role modeling. As in the military context, these same factors are contributing to the phenomenal increase of violence in our culture.

The first method of desensitization the military uses is brutalization. Brutalization and desensitization are what happens at boot camp. From the moment you step off the bus, you are physically and verbally abused, countless push ups, endless hours at attention, or running with heavy loads while carefully trained professionals take turns screaming at you. Your head is shaved, you are herded together naked and dressed alike, losing all individuality. There is no good fruit that comes from this type of treatment of others.

Proverbs 30:33 Surely the churning of milk brings forth butter, and the ringing of the nose brings forth blood, so the forcing of wrath brings forth strife.

This brutalization is designed to break down your existing mores and norms and to accept a new set of values that embrace destruction and violence and death as a way of life. And in the end, you are desensitized to violence and accept it as a normal and essential survival skill in your brutal new world. This disregards God's instruction in Proverbs 15:1, "A soft answer turns away wrath, but grievous words stir up anger."

How does desensitization affect our children? Something very similar to this desensitization to violence is happening to children through violence in the media. But instead of 18-year-olds, it begins at the age of 18 months when a child is first able to discern what is happening on television or the Internet or whatever screen they are watching. At that age, a child can watch something happening on television or on the Internet and mimic that action. But it is not until children are six or seven years old that the part of the brain kicks in that lets them understand where information comes from.

Even though young children have some understanding of what it means to pretend, they are developmentally unable to distinguish clearly between fantasy and reality. When young children see somebody shot, stabbed, raped, brutalized, degraded, or murdered on TV or the Internet, to them, it is as though it were happening.

To have a child of 3, 4, or 5 watch a splatter movie, learning to relate to a character for the first 90 minutes, and then in the last 30 minutes watching helplessly as that new friend is hunted and brutally murdered is the moral psychological equivalent of introducing your child to a friend, letting her play with that friend, and then butchering that friend in front of your child's eyes—because children cannot distinguish at that age. And this happens to children hundreds upon hundreds of times, I would say, thousands upon thousands of times. Sure, they are told, "Hey, it's all for fun. Look, this isn't real. It's just TV." And they nod their little heads and say, "Ok," but they cannot tell the difference.

People are conditioned to be hostile against God. Yes, there is an enmity against God that exists in the human mind. But to go to the point of extreme violence and killing, it takes a motivation or incentive. We will get to some of that.

Sin never consists merely of a voluntary act of transgression. Every corruption proceeds from something and that is more deeply seated than the corruption itself. A sinful act is the expression of a sinful heart.

Proverbs 4:23 Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life.

Proverbs 23:7 For as he thinks in his heart, so is he. "Eat and drink!" says he to you, but his heart is not with you.

Please turn over to Romans 8. Sin must always include, therefore, the perversity of the heart, mind, disposition, and will. And this was true in the case of the first sin, and it applies to all sin. The frequency of this corruption is explicit throughout Scripture.

Romans 8:5-7 For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God, for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be.

So, the human mind continually thinks about and desires the things characteristic of sinful human nature. That is, it thinks the way the unbelieving world thinks, emphasizing what it thinks is important, pursuing what it pursues, and disregarding God's will.

The thinking of the natural man is conditioned and governed by enmity directed against God and His way of life. Although human hostility toward God is natural, the conditioning received in a wicked society encourages sinful actions to become second nature. And this means that corruption becomes the controlling part of the heart, hardening it like iron. Sin and a hardened heart are like cold iron.

If you take cold iron and attempt to bend it into a certain shape, you waste your time. Lay it on an anvil and try to beat it into shape with a sledgehammer and you will have done nothing to reshape it. But put it in the fire, let it soften, and become malleable, and then lay it on the anvil. Each stroke will make a big difference in shaping how you want it.

The same principle applies to your heart. It is not shapeable when cold and hard from conditioning it to sin, but put it into the furnace of trial where it can be made molten, and after that it can be molded like wax and shaped into the character of Jesus Christ.

That is why our trials are so important, especially the stronger ones that it takes to beat us in the shape of Jesus Christ, so to speak. Sometimes fiery trials are necessary to reshape the conditioning we have received from a constant diet of violence or immorality. It is much wiser to avoid the conditioning to sin in the first place.

Flip back a few chapters to Romans 1. Corruption is not equal in all. There are multiple restraining factors.

Romans 1:24 Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves.

Romans 1:28-32 And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting; being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness; they are whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, violent, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving, unmerciful; who, knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them.

Unconverted people are still endowed with conscience, and the work of the law is written on their hearts so that in measure and at all points, they fulfill its requirement, meaning they know generally what is right and wrong. It is instilled into them through the human spirit.

Romans 2:14-15 For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do the things in the law, these, although not having the law, are a law to themselves, who show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and between themselves their thoughts accusing or else excusing them.

These works that the unconverted do by nature are not being done from a motive of love for God and neighbor. So although they receive inherent blessings from sometimes unknowingly obeying God's law, the law is not a directing principle and a controlling purpose in their lives that is done for God's glory.

I Corinthians 2:14 But the natural man receives not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

Please turn over to Titus 1, verse 15. The enmity people have against God motivates them to teach it to others. Teachers spoken of in Titus 1 stand condemned by the test of character and conduct.

Titus 1:15-16 To the pure all things are pure, but to those who are defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure; but even their mind and conscience is defiled. They profess that they know God, but in works they deny Him, being abominable and disobedient, and disqualified for every good work.

So the teachers of violence and immorality behind media entertainment are the writers, producers, directors, actors, executives, and advertisers who approve of the subject matter presented. Look at the personal lives of these individuals and you uncover some of the most depraved, insane degenerates on earth. Matthew 7:20 says, "By their fruits you will know them." Their evil fruits are produced for our entertainment.

Now, the second method of desensitization the military uses is classical conditioning. Discovered by Russian physiologist, Ivan Pavlov, classical conditioning is a type of unconscious or automatic learning. This learning process creates a conditioned response through associations between an unconditioned stimulus and a neutral stimulus. In simple terms, classic conditioning involves placing a neutral stimulus before a naturally occurring reflex.

One of the best known examples of classical conditioning is Pavlov's classic experiments with dogs. In these experiments, the neutral signal was the sound of a tone and the naturally occurring reflex was salivating in response to food. By associating the neutral stimulus, the sound, with the unconditioned stimulus, the food, the sound of the tone alone could produce a salivation response. Most people have come across and are aware of Pavlov's dogs experiment. The dogs learned to associate the bells ringing with food and once conditioned, the dogs could not hear the bell without salivating.

According to Lieutenant Colonel Grossman,

The Japanese were masters at using classical conditioning with their soldiers. Early in World War II, Chinese prisoners were placed in a ditch on their knees with their hands bound behind them.

And one by one, a select few Japanese soldiers would go into the ditch and bayonet their prisoner to death. What a horrific way to kill another human being. Up on the bank, countless other young soldiers would cheer them on in their violence.

Comparatively few soldiers actually killed in these situations. But by making the others watch and cheer, the Japanese were able to use these kinds of atrocities to classically condition a very large audience to associate pleasure with human death and suffering.

Immediately afterward, the soldiers who had been spectators were treated to Saki, the best meal they had had in months, and the so-called comfort girls. The result? They learned to associate committing violent acts with pleasure. The Japanese found these kinds of techniques to be extraordinarily effective at quickly enabling very large numbers of soldiers to commit atrocities in the years to come.

Grossman continues quote,

Operant conditioning [which we will get to in a minute] teaches you to kill, but classical conditioning is a subtle but powerful mechanism that teaches you to like it. [The mind of men and how depraved they can become with Satan's influence.] This technique is so morally reprehensible that there are very few examples of it in modern us military training, but there are some clear-cut examples of it being done by the media to our children.

Children in this society are classically conditioned. Children today watch vivid pictures of human suffering and death, and they learn to associate it with their favorite soft drink, popcorn, candy, and snack.

A disturbing reaction happens all the time in movie theaters. When there is bloody violence, many people spontaneously laugh. People have become hordes of barbarians who have learned to associate violence with pleasure. And the result is that people have become contemporary Romans, cheering and snacking as the Christians are being slaughtered in the global colosseum.

Repeated media violence destroys your violent immune system and conditions you to find pleasure in violence. The result is a phenomenon that functions much like brain cancer.

Now, the third method of desensitization the military uses is operant conditioning. This is a very powerful procedure of stimulus-response. A benign example is the use of flight simulators to train pilots. An airline pilot in training sits in front of a flight simulator for endless hours. And when a particular warning light goes on, he is taught to react in a certain way. When another warning light goes on, a different reaction is required.

Stimulus-response, stimulus-response, over and over again.

One day the pilot is flying a plane, the plane is going down and 300 people are screaming behind him. He is wetting his seat cushion and he is scared out of his wits. But he does the right thing. Why? Because he has been conditioned to respond reflexively to this type of crisis.

When we are frightened or angry, we will do what we have been conditioned to do. In fire drills, children learn to file out of the school orderly. One day there is a real fire and they are frightened out of their wits, but they do exactly what they have been conditioned to do and it saves their lives.

According to Lieutenant Colonel Grossman,

The military and law enforcement community have made killing a conditioned response substantially raising the firing rate on the modern battlefield.

Whereas infantry training in World war II used bullseye targets. Soldiers now learn to fire at realistic manmade silhouettes that pop into their field of view. That is the stimulus! The trainees have only a split second to engage the target. The conditioned response is to shoot the target and then it drops.

Stimulus-response, stimulus-response, stimulus-response—repeatedly over and over again. Soldiers or police officers experienced hundreds of repetitions.

Later, when soldiers are on the battlefield or a police officer, officer is walking a beat and somebody pops up with a gun, they will shoot reflexively and shoot to kill if they feel like they are in harm's way.

Now we know that 75% to 80% of the shootings on the modern battlefield result from this kind of stimulus-response training. Now, if you are a little troubled by that, how much more should we be troubled by the fact that every time a child plays an interactive point-and-shoot video game, he is learning the exact same conditioned reflex and motor skills.

Lieutenant Colonel Grossman related a firsthand experience with a child who had been conditioned with the stimulus-response method of conditioning. It was an expert.

I was an expert witness in a murder case in South Carolina offering mitigation or a kid who was facing the death penalty. I tried to explain to the jury that interactive video games had conditioned him to shoot a gun to kill. He had spent hundreds of dollars on video games, learning to point and shoot, point and shoot. One day he and his buddy decided it would be fun to rob the local convenience store. They walked in and he pointed a snub-nosed 38 pistol at the clerk's head. The clerk turned to look at him and the defendant shot reflexively from about 6 ft. The bullet hit the clerk right between the eyes—which is a pretty remarkable shot with that weapon at that range—and killed this father of two.

Afterward we asked the boy what happened and why he did it. It clearly was not part of the plan to kill the guy—it was being videotaped from six different directions. He said, "I don't know, it was a mistake. I was not supposed to happen."

You never, never put your quarter in that video machine with the intention of not shooting. There is always some stimulus that sets you off. And when he was excited and his heart rate went up, and vasoconstriction [the word I used long ago in the sermon] closed his forebrain down, this young man did exactly what he was conditioned to do: he reflexively pulled the trigger shooting accurately just like all those times he played video games.

This process is extraordinarily powerful and frightening. The result is ever more homemade pseudo-psychopaths who kill reflex reflexively and show no remorse. Our children are learning to kill and learning to like it. We run into these situations often—kids who have never picked up a a gun in their lives, pick up a real gun and are incredibly accurate. Why? Video games.

Proverbs 22:6 says, "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." Hopefully we are training our children to do the right thing and that we are conditioning them and programming them in a right way to live God's way of life.

Now, the fourth method of desensitization the military uses is role model conditioning. In the military, you are immediately confronted with a role model: your drill sergeant. He personifies violence and aggression. Along with military heroes, these violent role models have always been used to influence young impressionable minds.

Today, the media are providing our children with role models and this can be seen not just in the lawless sociopaths in movies and TV shows, but it can also be seen in the media-inspired copycat aspects of mass murders at schools. And then we get the copycat, cluster murders that work their way across America like a virus spread by the six o'clock news. No matter what someone has done, if you put his picture on TV, you have made him a celebrity and someone somewhere will emulate him. So the media, including the news media, is grossly negligent and responsible in every way for their promotion of violent and immorality as entertainment.

What are we to think of the violence in the Bible? I have heard people actually (not in the church) ask that very thing, and that is a good question. The Bible is a realistic and truthful book that sometimes looks at life at its worst. Acts of violence in the Bible are prompted by audacity, anger, revenge, judgment, and most of all, degeneration. Pride, of course, is behind it. All biblical examples are meant to horrify us with the consequences of sin. However, human examples of the atrocities we watch in the media are meant to please and excite us to want more. That is the one of the big differences.

Acts of degenerate violence explode from the pages of the Bible. As evil people perform unspeakable acts in the way of military and individual atrocities. During the Babylonian invasion, King Zedekiah was forced to watch his sons slaughtered, after which his own eyes were gouged out.

Please turn to Hebrews 11, verse 36. In the New Testament, the violence that takes the specific form of persecution of martyrs. The beheading of John the Baptist, though referred to in vague description, is no less gruesome. In Hebrews 11, God makes a definite point by ending the honor roll of the faithful with stories of survival and triumph, but with an ever-expanding vision of violence against the innocent.

Hebrews 11:36-37 Still others had trial of mockings and scourgings, yes, and of chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were tempted, were slain with the sword. They wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented.

The Bible is not a nice book that hides the negative side of life. It is a book of thoroughgoing realism and truth. And thankfully, God's way of life in the Bible is the positive and the peaceful side of life.

It is because of people's hearts that we are desensitized to sin. And that is one of the reasons we have disturbing examples of violence in the Bible, so we can understand the result of sin. Sinful perpetrators pay an extremely high penalty. Death! If they do not repent, eternal death, or permanent death is probably better. A person who lives by the sword shall die by the sword.

The Bible stories of violence demonstrate the depths of depravity to which people descend. I had a list here regarding military atrocities in the Bible. But in reading it and looking at it, I cannot read them to you. They are too horrific, especially with children in the audience. Absolutely worst of things done to people. But they are in Scripture. They are in I Samuel and Kings and Judges and Joshua and Amos. So they are all through the Bible, in the Old Testament especially.

Please turn with me to Ezekiel 7. What is God's judgment on people given to violence? Ezekiel prophesized while in a concentration camp that, because of the Jews' pride, idolatry, and violence, the devastation from violence will get so bad that in some areas, no one will survive. This prophecy in Ezekiel 7 warns that judgment on Judah is near. In the writing of Ezekiel at this time, God had been longsuffering as His people disobeyed His law and defiled His prophets. But now their sins had ripened and the nation would have to reap what they sowed. In their pride they had cultivated a false confidence that the Lord would never allow His people to be exiled or His temple destroyed. But their sin had now matured and both were now about to happen.

Ezekiel 7:10-13 'Behold, the day! Behold, it has come! Doom has gone out; the rod [or literally tribe] has blossomed, pride has budded. Violence has risen up into a rod of wickedness; none of them shall remain, none of their multitude, none of them; nor shall they be wailing for them. The time has come, the day draws near. Let not the buyer rejoice, nor the seller mourn, for wrath is on their whole multitude. [It means everyone.] For the seller shall not return to what has been sold, though he may still be alive; for the vision concerns the whole multitude, and it shall not turn back; no one will strengthen himself who lives in iniquity.'

So with the Babylonian invasion imminent, the price of land would certainly drop and wealthy people could quickly increase their holdings, but there was no guarantee that they would hold what they purchased. There is no opportunity to redeem property if death comes first.

Isaiah used a similar image when describing the Assyrian invasion of the land in Isaiah 10:5, only he saw the invaders as the rod in His hand. If if that is the image Ezekiel had in mind, then the rod is Nebuchadnezzar and the blossoming means that the time was ripe for God to punish the people. Violence in the land had grown into a rod of wickedness and the people's sins would find them out.

Ezekiel 7:23-27 'Make a chain, for the land is filled with crimes of blood, and the city is full of violence. Therefore I will bring the worst of the Gentiles, and they will possess their houses; I will cause the pomp of the strong to cease, and their holy places shall be defiled. Destruction comes; they will seek peace, but there shall be none. Disaster will come upon disaster, and rumor will come upon rumor. Then they shall seek a vision from a prophet; but the law will perish from the priest, and counsel from the elders. The king will mourn, the prince will be clothed with desolation, and the hands of the common people will tremble. I will do to them according to their way, and according to what they deserve, I will judge them; then they shall know that I am the Lord!'"

And that is the theme throughout the entire book of Ezekiel. "Then they shall know that I am the Lord!" And that is why there is violence in the Bible, so we can see the contrast and what God is going to bring upon nations that do that. And it may not happen exactly this way to this nation, but this is a pattern and God has used this pattern repeatedly. So will it happen to this nation who fits all of the indictments here?

Violence was a result of Judah's sin of idolatry, pride, and other abominations resulting in her destruction. Ezekiel makes it very clear that Judah had filled the land with violence, partly because of idolatry and spiritual adultery. Killing and violence are not the normal state according to God's standards, but it is a natural state for the wicked.

Now, let us jump to the next chapter in Ezekiel.

Ezekiel 8:12 Then He said to me, "Son of man, have you seen what the elders of the house of Israel do in the dark, every man in the room of his idols? For they say, "The Lord does not see us, the Lord has forsaken the land."

Ezekiel 8:17-18 And He said to me, "Have you seen this, O son of man? Is this a trivial thing to the house of Judah to commit the abominations which they commit here? For they have filled the land with violence; then they have returned to provoke Me to anger. Indeed they put the branch to [it is mistranslated, where it says "their nose," it actually says My nose. It is actually God's nose. They put the branch to God's nose.] My nose. [Originally, the text was altered by the Masorites. So we know exactly when that happened.] Therefore I also will act in fury. My eye will not spare nor will I have pity; and though they cry in my ears with a loud voice, I will not hear them."

Verses 17 and 18 summarize this chapter of willful idolatry by declaring that this wickedness of Judah's leaders had allowed violence to fill the land. All this had repeatedly provoked God. It is certainly what is happening with the administration today and previous administrations in this country. And they have promoted violence, encouraged it, paid for it.

The vision of coming judgment would not be reversed. Instead, the whole economic pattern would be reversed. Had the Jews obeyed God's law, the slaves would have been freed and the ownership of the land would have been protected. But now the surviving Jews would be enslaved and their land was taken from them. The people had not obeyed the laws concerning the Sabbath for the land. So the Lord took the land from them until those Sabbaths were fulfilled.

In God's sight, these things were repulsive, detestable, and provoked Him to anger. Except for the faithful remnant, the Jewish people no longer feared God or cared about pleasing Him. We eventually lose what we selfishly keep for ourselves, but we keep what we give to the Lord forever.

Please turn over to Mark 7. Now let us shift gears to another principle that applies. Here in Mark 7, verses 1 through 13, Jesus was speaking directly to the Pharisees and the teachers of the law. And then beginning in verse 14, He called the crowd around Him because He wanted them to hear the crux of His teaching about what is clean and pure.

Mark 7:14-23 When He had called all the multitude to Himself, He said to them, "Hear Me, everyone, and understand. There is nothing that enters a man from outside which can defile him; but the things which come out of him, those are the things that defile a man. If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear." When He had entered a house away from the crowd, His disciples asked Him concerning the parable. So He said to them, "Are you thus without understanding also? Do you not perceive that whatever enters a man from outside cannot defile him, because it does not enter his heart but his stomach, and is eliminated, thus purifying all foods." And He said, "What comes out of a man, that defiles a man. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornication, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within and defile a man."

Movies, sitcoms, and other programs subconsciously condition us to accept all these evil things, which then become part of our way of thinking. Children or adult, it does not matter, it affects everyone. It becomes part of our way of thinking, coming out of our hearts and minds.

What really makes a person unclean comes from within, out of the heart and the will—what we think, say, desire, and do.

Now, after leaving the crowd, Jesus entered a house and taught the disciples privately and although the disciples had already spent considerable time with Jesus and belonged to the inner circle of His concern, they were slow to understand the meaning of His teaching. And Jesus seemed surprised at their lack of understanding of spiritual truth.

The reason nothing entered a person from the outside spiritually defiles him is because it enters into the physical stomach, not the heart. The heart represents the mind and the essence of an individual. In a Semitic expression, the heart is the center of human personality. Out-of-the-heart thoughts determine people's actions or inaction.

This list in Mark 7:21-22 seems to move from overt sins to sinful attitudes or bad character. Evil thoughts in verse 21 is first in the list, indicating the following sins arise from evil thoughts. Along the same vein, Isaiah 29:13 says, "Therefore the Lord said: 'Inasmuch as these people draw near with their mouth, and honor Me with their lips, but have removed their hearts far from Me, and their fear toward Me is taught by the commandment of men [by the commands, principles, and philosophy of men]."

Please turn over to Psalm 28. Obviously, the godly do not want to be treated in the same way as the wicked are promised to be treated by God if they do not repent.

Psalm 28:3-5 Do not take me away with the wicked and with the workers of iniquity, who speak peace to their neighbors, but evil is in their hearts. Give them according to their deeds, and according to the wickedness of their endeavors; give them according to the work of their hands; render to them what they deserve. Because they do not regard the works of the Lord, nor the operation of His hands, He shall destroy them and not build them up.

So the wicked in verse 3 are not simply people who commit sins. Even the faithful sometimes do that. But the wicked oppose God and His people with deceit and scheming. Evil is in their hearts. God will hold the wicked accountable for the evil they have done. So we must stay as far from them as possible to avoid their deceptions.

Now, if you will flip back to Romans 7, There is a great contrast between the work of the wicked and the work of their hands, and God's works and the work of His hands. The wicked produce misery and death, but God produces goodness and life. Who (especially what Christian) is there who has not time and again experienced the struggle against sin described here by the apostle Paul?

Romans 7:15-25 For what I for what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do. If then I do what I will not to do, I agree with the law that it is good. But now, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find. For the good that I will will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice. Now if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. I find then a law, that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good. For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man [that is, from the heart]. But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.

So who is there who has not lost that struggle, perhaps many times? Every human being has, of course, no one himself can live sinlessly.

Matthew, Mark, and Luke all record that Jesus said, "With men, it is impossible, but with God, all things are possible." Paul shows that the only deliverance from the body of death is through Jesus Christ and the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit—"that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. . . they are the sons of God." We see that in Romans 8:4.

Nevertheless, we have our part in it too. And it all centers on the mind.

Repentance of sin means to change one's mind with respect to sin. And if we repent and are baptized, accepting Jesus Christ as our Savior, the promise is we will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit and be renewed in the spirit of our minds.

The violence of Jesus Christ's crucifixion is the pivotal point of the redeeming process. The prophetic song of the suffering Christ in Isaiah 53 hints at this paradox. In His life on earth, Jesus did no violence, as it states there in Isaiah 53. In his life on earth, Jesus Christ did no violence. But ironically, He received the greatest violence done to any man.

Let us begin to wrap this up. Please turn with me to Psalm 34, verse 14. Now we must make God's way of life our first nature. It must be internalized and it has to be our automatic reaction to any situation. Psalm 34 clearly states that both the righteous and the wicked will have afflictions. The difference is in the outcomes. None of the righteous shall be condemned, but the wicked shall be condemned. Psalm 34 is in our hymnal titled, "Turn Thou From Evil."

Psalm 34:14-22 Depart from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it. The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and His ears are open to their cry. The face of the Lord is against those who do evil, to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth. The righteous cry out, and the Lord hears, and delivers them out of all their troubles. The Lord is near to those who have a broken heart, and saves such as have a contrite spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all. He guards all his bones; not one of them is broken. Evil shall slay the wicked, and those who hate the righteous shall be condemned. The Lord redeems the soul of His servants, and none of those who trust Him shall be condemned.

There is an emphasis here on the difference between how God treats the faithful and the wicked. The Hebrew expressions brokenhearted and in some translations, crushed in spirit in verse 18, refer to the pride and stubbornness in one's heart being humbled.

Peace is a fruit of the Spirit but is not produced without effort. Although it is a gift from God through Jesus Christ, peace must be strived for, sought after, and pursued. The biblical importance of the word peace is evident from its frequent and extensive use in the New Testament—80 times and in every book.

Hebrews 12:14 Pursue peace with all men, and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord.

I Peter 3:11 Let him turn away from evil and do good; let him seek peace and pursue it.

So we have an active commission to do just that. We must be active in doing it. We must pursue peace and we must promote peace everywhere we go.

Please turn for a final scripture to James 3, verse 13. The pursuit of peace is not merely an elimination of discord, but is produced by a conscious effort to bring it about.

James 3:13-18 Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show by good conduct that his works are done in the meekness of wisdom. But if you have bitter envy and self-seeking in your hearts, do not boast and lie against the truth. This wisdom does not descend from above, but is earthly, sensual, demonic. For where envy and self-seeking exist, confusion and every evil thing are there. But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy. Now the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.

So God grants peace as a gift through Jesus Christ, whose suffering and sacrifice opened the way for peace between humans and God and between humans and other humans.

A crop of righteousness cannot be produced in a climate of animosity and self-seeking. Righteousness will grow only in a climate of peace and it must be sown and cultivated by the peacemakers. They not only love peace and live with peace of mind, but also work to promote conditions of peace.

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