Born To Win Podcast - With Ronald L. Dart

Does Satan have access to God? Do they talk? There is a story in the Bible that says that they do talk—at least periodically. The story is in the ancient book of Job—what some say is the oldest written work in Hebrew.There are those who believe that the Book of Job is an elaborate allegory, sort of like taking one of Jesus’ parables and enlarging it into many chapters. Those who say this do not necessarily mean to question the authenticity or inspiration of the book. Only its form.Whatever the case, it gives us an interesting insight into the spirit world with a couple of very important, practical concepts.

We really know very little about the spirit world, and it is probably just as well. Unfortunately, a lot that we think we know about is nothing but myth and guesswork. The entire question has been obscured by everything from ghost stories to movies, television, and even video games.As far as I can tell, the only reliable source of information about this world is the Bible. And part of the problem, even in the Bible, is the ambiguity of the word spirit.In both Hebrew and Greek, the words are quite similar in usage to the English word spirit. Except that in Hebrew and Greek, the basic meaning of the word is air, breath, or wind. Of special interest is the German word for spirit: geist, from which we get the word ghost. Hence the King James translators (who were a lot closer to the old German than we are) could speak of the Holy Ghost as opposed to evil spirits or ghosts. This gets lost in the translation, but the gospel writers speak of two kinds of spirit—one of them holy and one of them evil (or unclean

I was doing one of my periodic pilgrimages through the Psalms this week, and I came across a plaintive cry from King David. It got into my mind and I can’t get it out. Here’s what he said: If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do? I was struck by a footnote on the word foundations. It remarked that, figuratively, the word was talking about the moral and political support of a society. And, in a lot of ways, that feels like where we are in our own society today. The foundations—the moral and political support of our society are being destroyed.The question of what the righteous can do, then, is not merely a helpless complaint made while throwing hands in the air. It is an honest question: What can we do? And, when you put it that way, there is much that the righteous can do—more than you might have thought. But, for starters, you’ve really got to realize what it is that you’re up against. One thing that stands in opposition are the people the Psalmist calls

Who is Satan, the devil? What is he? Where does he come from? Well, most people identify him with the Lucifer of the Bible who is mentioned in the 14th chapter of Isaiah. It says:How are you fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How are you cut down to the ground, who did 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: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the farthest sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High. Yet you shall be brought down to sheol, to the sides of the pit.Isaiah 14:12–15 KJ2000Before we can understand this interpretation, we have to understand where angels come from in the first place—and why they even exist. We’ll find a fascinating discourse on the subject in the beginning of the Epistle to the Hebrews.

Is there a spirit world? I think you could ask a thousand people at random, and by far the majority would say yes, there is a spirit world. But when you start asking for details about that world, you will find a lot of opinion, a lot of unprovable stories, and very little hard data. And most people seem to be afraid of the spirit world. They don’t think of it in terms of religion, but of demons, ghosts, and the presence of great evil. The presence of evil in the world is a fact. but the origin of that evil is not at all clear.There is a spirit world. It is like another dimension, parallel to our own. There are times and circumstances that seem to allow interaction between these worlds, but that interaction is not unlimited or at will For the most part, humans cannot access that world, and the inhabitants of that world cannot routinely access the physical world.There is an incredible amount of mythology surrounding it, much of it entirely untrue, much of it may be generated by Lucifer himself. Misdirecti

I realize that the Old Testament law poses some really sticky problems. There is a law back there that regulates the conditions under which a man can sell his daughter. What do you do about laws like that? And there is another law that requires us to wear a blue tassel on our clothes. Does modern man have to do that?Almost everyone agrees that Christians don’t have to do that, but the reasons why they believe that are widely varied and sometimes colorful. And usually, they are wrong.We get some help with this question from an often-misunderstood passage out of Paul’s letter to the faithful in Colossae.

How does a strange new religious idea get started? Does someone wake up in the morning and say to himself, I think I’ll start a heresy today? Do little boys say, When I grow up, I want to be a heretic?No, I suspect it is a little more subtle than that. But it certainly is persistent. You can give man an absolutely perfect religion, a true faith, and he can’t stand it. He will have to improve it somehow.The church at Colossae is not mentioned in the Book of Acts, and it appears that Paul had never been there. But some really screwy ideas had turned up in Colossae, and I have no doubt that Paul was getting weary of the parade of heresies by the time he wrote his letter to the Colossians.

There is a difference between religion and faith. That may be a little hard to explain, but I think it is fair to say that a lot of people have a religion who have very little in the way of faith. Their religion is more a matter of ideas, arguments, positions, creeds, dogmas, and the like than it is about the heart. Churches can easily become the religious equivalent of political parties. They may be conservative or they may be liberal, and theological discussions can involve as much spin as any political discussion. Churches’ creeds can be just as political as any party platform, and heretics are merely people who are out to change the platform.In fact, political parties are disturbingly like religions and churches are disturbingly like political parties. But faith—real faith—has to be something entirely different from that. For one thing, the first prerequisite of real faith is honesty, and honesty is not possible without her sister, humility. When you think about it, unrelenting honesty l

I have given this a lot of thought, and I have finally figured out what’s wrong with Christianity. It’s people. There is not a thing wrong with the Christian faith. After all, what could be better than a religion brought in person by the Son of God?And think of all the wonderful teachings of Jesus, of love for God and neighbor, of gentleness and kindness and goodness. The problem with this is that Jesus left this marvelous religion in the hands of people, and that’s where things tend to go wrong.We might like to think that Christians in the first century were better people than we are, but it just isn’t so. Nor are we any better than they were. In Philippians 2, we find Paul addressing some of these same problems.

All of us have special people in our lives. These are people who give us great happiness—people who we love to be with. People we can talk to anytime and into the small hours of the night.Even pastors of churches who have been through many cities have people who are very special to them and who they long to see again. Think about that. What is it that makes people special to one another? I am not talking about romantic love. We all understand that. What is it that makes the deep friendship?There was a relationship like this between Paul and the saints at Philippi, a Greek city many miles north of Corinth. There has to be a reason for this kind of special relationship. It doesn’t happen everywhere and all the time. What was different about Philippi?

What does it mean to follow God? Paul called on the Ephesian Christians to: Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children.This is a high calling. As a child will imitate the mother or the father, so we are to imitate God. But how can we do this? God is in heaven and we are on earth.In Ephesians 5, Paul provides us with a starting point—the imitation of Christ—and more.

Funny things happen to us whenever we try to organize ourselves. I guess it is just in the way we are made. Even cows do it. When they start back from the field at milking time they follow a regular path, and I’m told they line up in order. And chickens must do it do, otherwise where does the expression pecking order come from?And so it is with churches. We all have our pecking order, but sometimes the whole thing gets out of hand. We say we love order, and we put together hierarchies with pecking orders from archbishop to bishop to priest to minister to deacon.There is even an effort to find these hierarchies in the Bible—or rather to name them after biblical terms. The fourth chapter of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians is a case in point.

One of the truly great things about the Christian faith is the hope of living forever in the presence of God. But one of the most depressing thoughts, and one that sometimes comes right after the first, is that there are so many people we may never see again—people we have loved, lost, people we have cherished, spent most of our lives with. And now they’re gone and sometimes we fear we may never see them again. It occurred to me when preparing this sermon that God himself may also experience this same longing—to see people again that he has seen before. Job thought so when he wrote:If a man die, shall he live again? all the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come. You shall call, and I will answer you: you will have a desire to the work of your hands.Job 14:14–15 AKJVThis is a surprisingly deep theological statement that Job makes here. Not only does it suggest a resurrection, it speaks of an unfinished work: you will have a desire to the work of your hands. It sugge

If you had been the midwife who helped Mary deliver the baby Jesus, and if you had been able to hold him in your arms for a few minutes, would you have thought he was precious? One of the most common expressions I ever hear when someone picks up a baby, sees a new baby, or bends over to touch a baby is, Oh, isn’t she precious? Isn’t he precious? You would have thought so, probably would have said so, and I have no doubt that is what happened that night.Something occurred to me this year that had not really occurred to me in the same way before: In making himself completely vulnerable as an infant (I don’t know how you could be any more vulnerable than that), Jesus established the value of every child that comes into the world. For they are all precious—little boys and little girls—and are about the most precious thing that will ever enter your life as a mother or father.Now, thanks to medical science, we can actually see them in the womb—moving, kicking, sucking their thumb. It is the most a

Many pastors and preachers see nothing wrong with the fact that today’s church doesn’t believe exactly the same thing as the primitive Christian church believed and taught. They place no small amount of weight upon what succeeding generations of theologians believed and taught.After all, those were learned men, and the primitive Christians were, well, primitive. They were fishermen, tax collectors, tent makers. What did they know about theology?The problem is, these fishermen, tax collectors, and tent makers are the people who have told us what Jesus taught them. A really interesting case in point is what the First Christians believed and taught about death and the afterlife.

If you have been blessed with a good Bible teacher, or some good books about the Bible, you already know that a lot has been said about the influence of Greek philosophy on the Christian faith. Some of it is even true. After all, the New Testament was written originally in the Greek language, and the language reflects a Greek worldview to that extent.That said, every author of every book appears to have been Jewish, and it is a Jewish worldview that is seen in the pages of the Greek text. There are, though, two Greeks whose ideas did have considerable influence among second and third generations of Christians. Their names are familiar: Socrates and Plato.Let’s contrast the deaths of Jesus and of Socrates (as well as the anticipation of their deaths) to help us better answer a fundamental question: What did the First Christians believe about death?

Many years ago, before I learned better about arguing religion, I was engaged in a discussion focused on people who never even heard the name of Jesus anytime in their lives. How could it be right for God to torture these people forever? Tell me he is just going to leave them dead and we have one picture. Tell me he has arranged for their eternal torment and we have another altogether.And then, there are the children. Are all these people, including countless children, who had never had a chance to be saved going to burn for all eternity?Perhaps you say, Well, I believe that God will make a way. Well, then you and I would be in agreement. But I think it would be strange indeed if in all the pages of the Bible, we couldn’t find so much as a hint as to what that way is.

I hesitate to tell you this, because when you find out what I want to talk about, you are liable to punch the button on your radio, click a button in your browser, and head off into other pursuits. I have given this a lot of thought and study, and I have come to the conclusion that, sooner or later, one way or another, we are all going to die. See, I knew you would want to buzz off, but stay with me a minute.I take my vitamins in hope of getting rid of some of the creaks, and I follow my doctor’s instructions. But every once in a while, I stop and laugh at myself because I know I am fighting a losing battle. The battle is worth fighting, because we have a lot of work to do, but I know, and you know, that in the end, we all die.A man known to us as the Apostle Paul faced up to the same questions of mortality and suffering for different reasons (He faced death in more ways than we ever will.) and he used an interesting metaphor for the human body: a tent.

There was in the days of Herod, the king of Judea, a certain priest named Zacharias, of the division of Abijah. His wife was of the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. And they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless. But they had no child, because Elizabeth was barren, and they were both well advanced in years.So it was, that while he was serving as priest before God in the order of his division, according to the custom of the priesthood, his lot fell to burn incense when he went into the temple of the Lord. And the whole multitude of the people was praying outside at the hour of incense. Then an angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing on the right side of the altar of incense. And when Zacharias saw him, he was troubled, and fear fell upon him.Luke 1:5–12 NKJV