Pastor Joel Laswell

In order for us to be conquerors in the sin issue, and to endure to the end though we may have been segregated from family, from church and brethren, and from society, we must keep walking in the light from God. What does it mean to walk in the Light and how do we do it?

As I have contemplated and studied the sin issue, for over thirty years now, I have come to the conclusion that the real reason that we as professing Christians stay where we are even when called by Jesus to separate from sin and apostasy is because we love our independence. And Satan feeds that love of independence because he is the originator of it and so we are fooled into thinking that we can be independent and still be in the family of God. So naturally then there would be no reason to leave a fallen church because you can be independent of their sin and not worry about receiving any consequences. This is a lie!

As I have contemplated and studied the sin issue, for over thirty years now, I have come to the conclusion that the real reason that we as professing Christians stay where we are even when called by Jesus to separate from sin and apostasy is because we love our independence. And Satan feeds that love of independence because he is the originator of it and so we are fooled into thinking that we can be independent and still be in the family of God. And just what is the sin of independence? This is at the heart of the Sin Issue and so it’s the topic of this study.

When we associate with sin we leave our heart open to hardening and not the softening we need in order to be like Jesus. As the old saying says, by beholding we become changed. In case you are unaware of this, no person is going to be in the kingdom of God who has hardness of heart. That is reality. If I am hard-hearted, something has to happen to my heart or I cannot go to heaven to be with Jesus. I want you to be in heaven and I want to be in heaven. Our heart must be in the right condition for this to happen. If we want to go to heaven, we must gain victory here, because there will be no hard-hearted people there.

The Gospel Cycle is the replication process of making disciples for Christ. Please click here to download the accompanying bible study: http://www.3asdchurch.org/Sabbath-School-Lesson--Student--TheGospelCycle.pdf

I want to look at is the effects of influence in relation to the Sin Issue. As those who profess to be Christians, we want to have a positive influence upon those within our sphere, right? But we also need to realize the effects that influence has upon us, and the source of that influence--whether it is good or bad... this is needed in order for any change to take place in our walk with the Lord.

In most cases when this is talked about more time is spent showing how Saul behaved toward David than David toward Saul but we can learn a lot by looking at David's reactions toward Saul and how the true church should react toward the professed. What always starts the process of apostasy is when sin is not dealt with as the Lord says it should be and that little leaven then pervades the entire church.

If in your personal situation you have pointed out sin in your church, your church turned against your call for repentance of sin and so you have obeyed the Lord and separated from that assembly--that organization, what is your attitude now to be toward that church organization? This is a growing issue as more and more churches are coming into conformity with the worlds standards and shunning God's word and law. How do we, God's faithful law keepers, react to our former brethren?

Now lets say that in your personal situation you have pointed out sin in your church, your church turned against your call for repentance of sin and you have obeyed the Lord and separated from that assembly--that organization. What is your attitude now to be toward that church organization?

I learned a life lesson from my coaches when I was young and participated in sports and that is the fundamentals are what will get you through the tough spots. So I was drilled every day in practice with the fundamentals of the game and found by experience that my coaches were correct. God teaches the same thing in the Bible about fundamentals. If we understand the fundamental principles of God's word, they will get us through the tough spots in our life. And this is important for us to believe because this particular topic is a very hard one for many to hear and if applicable to their church, to accept. And sad to say, it is applicable to most all church organizations today.

There are a couple of other things to consider in regard to these principles in Matthew 5 and 18. The first deals with the ‘time’ element involved… such as ‘when do you take witnesses with you?’ and ‘when do you take it to the church?’ etc… The second has to do with ‘how’ you contact the one who sinned against you. How to start the process outlined by Jesus.

What do you do if someone sins against you? How do you deal righteously with such an issue? We are to do as God has done towards us who have sinned against Him, and Jesus tells us how that is to be done. So I want to start by looking at the biblical principle we are to use when someone trespasses against us personally, and not necessarily in public though it could be. It is found in Matthew 18, and Matthew 5...

So what are the Biblical checks and balances in God's word that are to protect the church from the ravages of sin and apostasy, and promote the welfare of its members and the corpus itself? That is the topic of this study. How do we deal with the sin issue in the corpus--the body, the church? What are the principles and right motivation needed to rightly handle the Sin Issue in the church?

Twelve basic Bible study principles that can and should be used by the first time reader to the scholar.

Jesus gave several warnings to His followers concerning their future and the closing scenes in the great controversy between good and evil. One such warning is found in Matthew 24:24, "For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect." Now we could spend a lot of time just on this verse but what I want to bring to your attention is the part of this verse that concerns the reaction to perception. Is what we perceive necessarily the truth? Are we seeing what we are seeing or is it a skewed perception? And do we jump to conclusions upon that perception before it is verified?

Not until we can see the sin of someone else as our sin too can we learn to love him as Christ has loved us. The reason is that in loving us Jesus took our sin upon Himself. When He died on His cross, we died with Him—corporately--in principle. If this seems to be bad news, there is also good news: Christ forgave His murderers (see Luke 23:34), and that means He also forgave us..... those who have become a part of His corporate identity!

In part one I asked a very important question about this succession of the corporation of Christ and it was this: is this succession organizational, or is it the succession of truth? In other words, do we find the truth by submitting to the Church, or do we find the Church by submitting to the truth? The concept as to what constitutes succession in the Corpus Christi--the body of Christ--the church of Christ, whether it be organization, or whether it be truth, is vividly contrasted in the confrontation between Paul and the lawyer for the hierarchy of Jerusalem in his arraignment before Felix. Let's see what the Bible says......

A few studies ago I had put a little bug in your ears about this subject and said that if we understand this issue better then it would make some of the decisions of God that we read about in the Bible make sense to us. Like causing a worldwide flood to destroy man, His destruction of wicked nations, of entire families, and His decision to leave the people He had first chosen to be a nation of priests in order to begin a "new" church. Understanding this topic will help us to see that these decisions by God were not just arbitrary acts from an offended God. Understanding this topic correctly will also help us to see the reason we must remove ourselves from fallen rganizations and especially Babylon. So I hope this will open a lot of eyes to God's order of things as we go along.

Some more questions have arisen during this series concerning the different types of sin the Bible talks about and errors associated with those types, so I want to spend some time looking at that. These errors mainly deal with sins of ignorance, which the church rarely addresses, and errors dealing with the unpardonable sin. I want to look at the four categories of sin that the Bible addresses with some detail.

As we begin, I want to invite you to open to the book of Revelation. The last chapters in the Bible are chapters that we should all take special time to study. Right at the end of the book God gives final and closing instructions to His people. Some of the most important instructions and commands in the Bible are found in the last three or four chapters.

We’ve talked about the first and second steps in the salvation process in order to be justified in God’s sight, and how these steps relate to the third angel’s message of Revelation 14:9-12; and these first two steps are repentance and confession. But what do we do once we’ve been made right with God through these first two steps? Is that all that’s required in order for us to be assured a place in heaven? Because the wages of sin is eternal death, and God wants us to live eternally, there has to be a way for us to stop sinning or all life here is pointless.

Step one to Overcoming Sin is repentance and you can’t be justified by faith without repentance, and neither can you be justified by faith without confessing your sins. The two steps come very close together. What does it mean to confess? The Greek word means to: admit the truth of an accusation. Essentially you are saying that the accusations against you are true. But it implies more than just a mere admission. Confession is meant to be more specific than the mere admission of sinfulness. The recognition of the precise nature of a sin and an understanding of the factors that led to it are essential to true confession and to building up strength to resist a similar temptation if and when it reoccurs. I want to share with you the need to confess and why God wants us to confess our sins.

The subject of this particular study is one that nearly all Christians and non-Christians alike think they understand, but many really don’t when you see what the Bible teaches. There are many people today who have false ideas about the nature of true repentance, and I’d like to take some time to talk about it with you.

I want to share something with you that is very practical when it comes to our battle with sin. Not some speculation or abstract theory, but something we can actually use to help us become more like Jesus and thus be ready to meet Him in peace when He comes, and isn’t that what we want?

Our God is loving and merciful but He will not wait on us forever! There has to be a reason that involves this issue of sin that prolongs the finishing of The Great Controversy between Christ and Satan. What about secret sins? Have you ever heard about secret sins?

We have been studying how Jesus walked when confronted with the temptations of the great deceiver so we may learn to do likewise when tempted. What was the third temptation and how did Jesus overcome it?

We studied the first wilderness temptation of Jesus the last time we were together. And as we look into this second temptation experience of Jesus we will see that within every human heart the great conflict through which Christ passed in the wilderness of temptation is repeated.

How is Jesus our example, especially when it comes to battling temptation? Jesus went through the same attacks that we go through beloved yet He overcame these temptations by constantly drawing on that same power that is available to us. I want to concentrate on this example of Jesus on how to deal with temptations for that is the way Satan tries to convince us into choosing to sin--to be lawless.

A question arises very often when I speak about the sin issue and in particular, these truths about the will and conscience and educating the conscience and that question has to do with temptation--namely: what is temptation and is it a sin? Let us get an answer from the Bible to this question.

There are no material things that we can take with us out of this world, but there are some things that we can take with us out of this world. I want to talk to you about one of those things, and probably the most important of all. It is something that we use commonly in our every day speech and yet there are many people, if you ask them, they could not define exactly what it is. It has a great deal to do with the plan of salvation and it is the conscience.

So I finally looked at this flower bed the other day and it is a real mess. This pervasive plant has really taken root and is choking out the beautiful flowers. It is going to be a lot of work for me to uproot this plant from the flower bed without destroying the flowers. I have to be sure that I remove it at the root or it will continue to be a terrible problem. Sin is the same way in our life. Once it takes off it will keep growing and it will pervade your life and by your influence, that of others too. And if it is not uprooted, it will keep coming back. If we want to be ready when Jesus returns, we must have the root of sin removed from us. I wish to talk about being ready for Jesus by uprooting sin in our life.

Adam and Eve were created with a perfect mind that was in complete control of the passions of the heart—the higher brain was in control. Because the higher brain was in control, and they were wearing a robe of righteousness provided by God Himself, they would hit the mark every time in every choice they made. But something changed.

Paul states in Romans 3:23, "For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God." In Romans 6:23 he says, "For the wages of sin is death..." And in Ezekiel 18:4 it says, "The soul that sinneth, it shall die." From our previous studies we know that the Bible is speaking in these references about the second death in the lake of fire which consumes the sinner completely, turning them into ashes, never to exist at all anymore for eternity--see Malachi 4, Revelation 20. So if all have sinned and the end result of sin is eternal death, and if we want to stop sinning so that we can receive eternal life.... well we better be sure that we know exactly what sin is, don't you agree?

Knowing that the consequences for sinning is eternal death, we better be sure what sin is so that we can choose not to commit it and thus lose eternal life. Where is the only place we can rightly estimate the exceeding sinfulness of sin? In the light, the truth, of the cross! By looking at the truth about the cross--the death of Jesus, we will learn how terrible sin is--we will then see the sinfulness of sin.

We must get to the point where we see sin as God sees sin. In order to see the true sinfulness of sin as God does, one must come to the cross of Christ and look upon the One Who sinned not, yet died because of our sins so we may have life!

This is the conclusion of the series I have entitled Spiritual Possession and what I want to do is summarize what we have learned. I hope that this series has helped to educate you to the power and limitations that demons have, as well as remove doubts and give you the confidence that every believer may have that we can possess the strength to resist and help others to resist these foes of Christ. Jesus can give us victory over sin and the devil!

I want to share with you how to be protected from becoming possessed of devils or demons. There is only one way, one defense against falling under the control of these evil powers of darkness and that one defense is.........

I want to spend some time looking at the question that often arises especially after learning what we have learned and that is, what can cause a person to become demon possessed, or what can open a person up to be possessed of a demon or demons?

I want to continue in our series by taking a look at times when demons controlled a group of people, as well as examples of those who choose to be possessed--united with Satan and see what we can learn.

I want to continue our series, Spiritual Possession, by taking a look at some examples that deal with those who were from the church or in church leadership. If you don't think that someone from a good Christian home or church cannot be possessed by demons then you haven't been paying attention! I want to begin by looking at this devout follower of Jesus called Mary Magdalene.

Demons want to destroy human beings and if they can't do that, they want to possess us so as to coerce us in a way that best suits them to influence others to sin. Sin leads to destruction. These demons know that they are going to be destroyed and they want all to be a part of it. The demoniacs at Gergesa are a lesson about where sin will lead. Let's take a look at this example and learn.....

I want to contemplate one of the greatest hopes we have, if not the greatest, concerning that of Christ's ministry in our behalf. I want to look at the Resurrection Assurances with you.

Demon possession doesn't mean that you no longer have a will, or the freedom to choose. It means that your will is taken captive and caged, then beaten down and thus so weakened that it cannot but make the wrong choices--this is where sin leads. But it is possible that Jesus can be seen through the bars of the cage and set the captive free!

It seems like anywhere you go in the world, in just about anybody's life, at some point there are these minions of darkness that scare us. Now, with that kind of commonality there has to be some sort of truth associated with it, and there is. The Bible doesn't call him the bogeyman. It has another name. They're known as demons, devils, or evil spirits. And you'd be surprised how much the word of God has to say about demons, devils, and evil spirits and how to defeat these creatures. And defeating them is what is really important for us to know and understand--especially as we are living in the last days when such manifestations are going to increase and we will be confronted more and more by them. In this series of studies concerning spiritual possession we will be looking at the powers involved in spiritual possession, we are going to define some terms, look at examples of possession and how one grieves the Holy Spirit and then how to cast out demons.

We need to be cognizant of the fact that there’s another realm, another dimension that we cannot see with our physical sight, and yet it’s just as real as the world we’re living in right now with the things we see all around us. The apostle Paul spoke of these things in 2 Corinthians 4:18 when he said, “While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.”

As we have learned in all our studies of Revelation 13 and 14, very soon--with blinding force, there is going to be a national Sunday law. With that law will come the restrictions of the mark and then eventually a death decree for all who refuse it.

In light of the unprecedented event concerning this Jesuit Pope that addressed the US Congress, I think it would be a good idea for us to review what inspiration says will be the order of events regarding the coming Sunday Law and how we should react to these events as they unfold.

I want to spend some time with you again talking about the future. Not the future battle with the beast and His image. Not the future time of trouble. I want to go beyond that for we need to be reminded that there are better things in store for us. I want to take a look at a whole new world--a world much different than the one we live in today. I want you to see that this future home now being prepared for us will actually fulfill God's original plan for man's perfect happiness.

The message of the third angel concerns the beast, his image, and his mark. Let us see just what this warning entails...Go here for the study tract: www.3asdchurch.org/biblestudy.htm

One of the most theologically confused subjects in the Bible is that of hell. It has been fumbled by the clergy and distorted by the laity until the word has become best known as a common curse word. Everywhere people are asking the same questions: What and where is hell? What is the fate of the wicked? Will a God of love torture people throughout eternity? Will the fire of hell ever burn the wickedness out of sinners? These are questions, which deserve sound Bible answers, and the controversy surrounding the subject should not discourage us from exposing all the truth as it is in Christ.

Last time we learned that Revelation 14 describes three angels with messages for the world. It was to separate the church of Christ from the corrupting influence of the world that the first angel's message was given. Did the first message do its work? Yes! There was indeed a separation that took place and the second angel now makes a solemn proclamation that goes along with the first angel's message. Let’s see what that second message is and discover what it means. Go here for the study tract: www.3asdchurch.org/biblestudy.htm