Sound of Faith

Sharon Hardy Knotts: Greetings, friends and new listeners, and welcome to the Sound of Faith. I'm Sharon Hardy Knotts, thanking you for joining us today because we know faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. Today's message, 4 Ways God Humbles Man, walks us through Lucifer's lightning fall from his lofty position in heaven and why it was necessary for God to put safeguards in place when he created man in his own image and likeness. Discover four ways God humbles man.

R. G. Hardy: So he says, "How you are fallen, oh Lucifer. You have fallen from the highest place that a created being could be. You have fallen from the point and a place that was right in the throne room of God before Him." When it says the mount of congregation in the sides of the north, we're talking about the highest heaven. How many understand there are three heavens?

We know the first heaven is the atmospheric heaven, and we send airplanes up there and we send rockets even further. But then there's a second heaven, and the second heaven is where Satan is ruling now. He's not ruling from down here in the pit. He's not there yet. He's going there. We're told in Revelation 20 he's going there, but right now he's not there. He's ruling from the second heaven.

And that's another message, but I'll simply say this: Ephesians 6:12 says we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places, or we should say in the heavenlies. So what does that mean? We're wrestling against powers and dominions and thrones that are there.

And we know by going to Daniel the 12th chapter, we get to look behind the curtain and we saw that when Daniel's prayer was answered and God sent Gabriel with the answer, but on the way down, up there in the second heaven, he was accosted by the prince of Persia, which was an evil angel. And they had a standoff.

And it wasn't until God sent the angel Michael, who is greater in power, his name meaning "he that is like God." He came down and he loosed Gabriel from the prince of Persia so he could come on down. I told you that so you could see that's the second heavens.

But there's a third heaven. That's the paradise of God. That's where Paul was caught up, but he said, "I wasn't given permission to tell you about it." Boy, I bet you that really bugged him. He said, "I saw things that are not lawful for me to tell you." Why? God was saving that for John, for John to tell us in the Revelation.

So we see there are three heavens. Lucifer was up there, right before the throne of God, and he fell all the way down. And Jesus said, "I beheld it." It happened so fast, Jesus said it was like lightning, and it was done. Amen! And why did he fall so far? Because he said in his heart... because he had a self-focus of his own beauty and it gave him a distorted perspective of himself, and he began to say, "I will."

Do you know that "I will" is the strongest declaration that you can make in the English language? "I will." There's no stronger way that you can put something than to say, "I will." And he said, "I will. I'm going to ascend into heaven. I will exalt my throne." Hey! He had a throne. Now we're learning something else about him. He had a throne. Hmm. So that tells us that he was above, above other angels. Amen. He had a throne. He said, "I will exalt my throne."

My place, let's put it this way, whether it was an actual throne made out of gold, I don't know, but he had a position. He had a seat of authority. Amen. He said, "I am going to exalt my position and my authority above the stars of God. And that's not even good enough for me. I'm not even satisfied to be over all the angels that God's created. No, that's not good enough for me. I am the most beautiful. I am the most glorious. I am worthy of more than that. I will sit upon the mount of congregation in the sides of the north. I will be like the Most High God." Wow. And he was a created being.

And he still uses that same M.O. on people today. He tells people, "If you follow me, I'll give you power." Amen. There are some people that are consciously have made the decision to follow Satan, and he's promised them power and he's given them power. They have power to do evil things until they come up against the power of the blood of the Lamb.

The weakest Christian, just a baby saved two seconds, that believes in the power of the blood of Jesus Christ has greater power and authority over the vessels that Satan has empowered. Amen. It's just believing that and acting on it. If he can scare you or put fear on you, then that will negate your faith, and then he can carry out what he wants to do.

But oh, I don't care if you're shaking in your shoes, if you can barely open your mouth, and you're trying to talk, I don't care. Get it out! Say it: "The blood of Jesus! The blood of Jesus is against you!" He said, "I'm going to be like the Most High." But you know what Jesus said? He said he is a liar and the father of lies.

How many know "father" can actually refer to the source or origin of something? And that's what Jesus was saying. He is the originator of the lie. He created the first lie there ever was. He created the first lie because he said, "I am going to ascend above the stars and I am going to sit on the throne of the Most High God."

So he created a lie, and he then became the source of all lies. And Jesus said he is so distorted and so polluted, his wisdom is polluted. He's not dumb, people. Satan is not dumb. How many know he's not dumb? But his wisdom is polluted and distorted, so Jesus said there is no truth in him. When he speaks, he speaks a lie because he speaks of his own and there's no truth in him. And I've just quoted from John 8:44.

So he is the originator of all lies. Amen. But God said, "You're going to be brought down to the pit. To the pit." Yeah, you say you're going to ascend to the sides of the north, the holy mountain of God, but you're not going to ascend. You're going to descend. You're not only going to ascend higher, you're going a lot lower.

In fact, you're going to get kicked out. You're going to get kicked out of My presence. You're going to get kicked out of the third heaven, the second heaven, the first heaven. You're going to go all the way down to the earth. Amen. And Jesus said, "I beheld it. I was there when it happened. I saw it happen."

And you know what? It's going to happen again. It's going to happen again. Everything that we have read here and described is going to have a repeat performance according to the Book of Revelation, the 12th chapter and the 20th chapter. Amen. There's going to be war in heaven. That's what John said, "I saw war in heaven, and I saw Michael and God's faithful angels."

Remember, the devil got one-third but God's got two-thirds. And that's why there's more for us than be against us. Amen. And he says there was war in heaven, and Michael and the faithful angels went to war against the dragon, the serpent. And then he named him so that there is no mistaking who he was talking about: Satan.

The liar, the thief. And Satan, that name is a Hebrew name, actually. It's from the Hebrew Ha-Satan, and it means slanderer. Because you see, that's what he did. That's how he convinced these angels to go with him to a terrible fate, amen, because he slandered God. Slander was involved then and he still does the same thing now.

He lives up to his name every day. In fact, in this same 12th chapter of Revelation that I'm referring to, he's called Satan, the accuser of the brethren. And of course, brethren also includes sisteren, okay? When we're talking in the Bible, we know that it means God's children.

We don't get into that gender thing going on out there. We don't bring that in the church. We understand what we mean, don't we? And ladies, we don't get upset just because we read brethren. We understand it means God's people, God's children.

But he's the accuser of the brethren. He's always running to God accusing us. And let me tell you something, he will sit on your shoulder and accuse you to you. Amen. I'm going to say that over here in case y'all didn't get it. He will sit on your shoulder and accuse you to you!

How many know what I mean? He'll sit up here and tell you what a wretched Christian you are. He will tell you about all of your failures and your shortcomings, and maybe even sin that you have fallen into. He will remind you of it, and even when it is now under the blood. Because if we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all... all means just what it says: all unrighteousness.

Doesn't matter what kind of sin it is. Doesn't matter. Amen. Everything from lying and stealing and cheating to sexual sin, amen, to pride. All sin, He will cleanse us. But even after it's under the blood, Satan will come and sit on your shoulder and throw that up at you, remind you of it, try to make you feel bad all over again.

Because if he can make you feel bad, then you're not going to have confidence in your relationship with God. You're not going to pray with confidence. Your prayer is going to be a bunch of boo-hoo. But after you've done boo-hoo and repented, and there's nothing wrong with real repentance, tears come with it.

Contrition includes true godly sorrow, and tears will come, and that's good for us. Amen. It's like it washes our soul of condemnation and guilt. Amen. Guilt is a real thing, and initially guilt is a good thing because guilt makes us know that we've done something wrong and we need to get it right with God.

We need to repent of it. But once we've gotten it right with God, there is no more guilt. And if there is guilt there, the accuser of the brethren is the source. And he's a liar! And if you pay attention to him, all you're doing is dumping on your own self. You got to put him in his place. Amen. You got to start quoting the scriptures of God like I just quoted 1 John 1:9. Amen. So he's a slanderer.

Now, we've learned a lot about Lucifer because he is our adversary. That's what Peter said in 1 Peter 5:8-9. But your adversary, and he named him, the devil. And by the way, let's just get this meaning out of the way. Lucifer was light bearer, then he went to Satan the slanderer, and now he's the devil. And the devil is diabolos and that means he is your enemy. Your enemy! Amen.

Your adversary the devil walks about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. But you resist him steadfast in the faith. Amen. And now we can resist him because we don't have a distorted view of ourselves. We are not weighed down by our sin and our guilt. We know if any man be in Christ, he's a new creation, and old things are passed away and all things are become new. And we know who we are in Christ.

So we don't let the devil push us around. We do what James 4:7 says: we resist the devil with God's word, with the knowledge of the blood of Jesus, and he flees from us. So we've learned a lot about our adversary. Amen. Now, this is in ages past. We don't have a time frame for this, we just know it's in the ageless past. God decided He wanted to make a new creation.

A new creation. And when He was going to create these new beings, He was going to have them to inhabit the restored earth. Without going through a whole 'nother message, let me just say this. When Satan fell, he brought chaos to the earth that then existed. He brought chaos. And you can do more of this study on your own.

So the earth became chaotic. God did not create the earth chaotic. Genesis 1:1, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." Do you think that He would create something to be chaotic? Of course not. But we know the earth became void, uninhabited, covered with darkness, covered in water. Amen.

So that's another lesson. But I want you to see that God restored the earth. He restored it. He began to divide the waters above and the waters on the earth, and He created the sun and the moon to let light come because the sun brings life with it. And then He said, "I'm going to create new created beings to inhabit this beautiful, beautiful earth."

We can't even imagine the beauty of the earth at that point. We get little glimpses when we see Hawaii and some of those exotic islands in the South Pacific and we think, "Wow," and that's an earth that's been cursed. Imagine what heaven must be like, and imagine what the earth was like before the curse.

So He said, "I'm going to create some new beings to put on this earth." Amen. But He knew that He would have to put in safeguards. Look what happened to Lucifer. He would have to put in safeguards to keep pride from entering into the heart of man and doing what happened to Lucifer. So what was God going to do?

Well, there's four ways that God humbles man and keeps pride from man. And when I say man, I'm talking about the human race. Amen. The human race. So let's turn to Genesis chapter 1 and look at verse 26. God's already restored the earth. He's beautified it. He's created all of the fish and the birds and the animals.

And now God said in verse 26 of Genesis 1, "And God said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over the cattle and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth."

So God created man in His own image. In the image of God created He him, and male and female created He them. Wow. God is taking a big risk. Don't you think He's taking a big risk? If Satan fell because he thought he was so gorgeous and so beautiful, and now God is going to create human beings in His image? In His own image after His own likeness?

Friends, this surpasses the beauty of Lucifer. Oh yes, this surpasses the beauty of all the angels that God created. He chose to create mankind in His own image, after His own likeness. And we have every reason to believe that Adam and Eve were covered in glorious light because they did not know they were naked until they sinned.

And then God had to cover them with something. But they didn't have a covering before that. Why? Because they were covered in glory, in light. If you think Lucifer was covered in light, what about Adam and Eve that were made in God's image, in God's likeness? Because God is light, and in Him is light.

In fact, Paul said that God is in a light that no man can approach unto. Wow. God, You took a big risk making and creating man in Your own image. Isn't this creating the risk and the danger that pride is going to come in his heart because he's created in God's image? Amen. Yes, that is a risk. It's a risk that God took seriously.

And this is how He took that risk and subjugated it. Let's look at chapter 2 and verse 7: "And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul." Go over to 3 and 19: "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread till thou return unto the ground, for out of it wast thou taken; for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return."

Obviously, that's what God spoke to them after they sinned. So what do we find here? What is it that we're seeing here? Here's the bottom line. Yes, we are made in the very image and likeness of God, and Adam and Eve before they sinned had the very glory of God.

Adam was so super intelligent. His brain was like no computer on earth could even begin to approach. He named all the animals. Amen. But what God did was He made us in His image and His likeness, but He made us out of dirt. He made us out of dirt.

The bottom line, folks, is we are made out of dirt. So no matter how beautiful, no matter how handsome, no matter how gorgeous that you may see someone, amen, and you think, "There is the epitome of beauty, there is the epitome of handsome." Now, that's what we call a hunk right there. That's what we call a goddess right there.

Amen. No matter how handsome, no matter how beautiful a person may be, at the end of the road, they're going back to dirt. We came from dirt, we're going back to dirt. Amen. Because our beauty even fades even as we get closer. You know the law of gravity. The law of gravity keeps us all grounded on the earth.

Without it, we would be floating around this building. And it's like gravity is pulling us back to the grave. The older you get, the more things start going south. Things start sagging. Things start going. Amen. You look in the mirror and you see that what used to be up here is now down here.

And we won't go on down the rest of the body, but that's what happens. It just starts sagging. Gravity is saying, "You're coming back. You're coming back. You're coming back to the dirt. From dust you art and to dust you shall return." Amen.

The body begins to slump, the face begins to fall, the wrinkles multiply, the teeth start falling out. Amen. All right, I'm going to throw this old story in there. I've told it before, but I'll tell it again. So a man was in the line at McDonald's buying lunch, and he looked over and he saw an elderly couple sitting at the table.

And he noticed that the husband was very meticulously dividing their lunch in half. He took the cheeseburger and he cut it in half and gave half to his wife and half to himself. He took the fries out and counted them, one for her and one for him. And then he took their soda and he had an extra cup, and he poured it in there till they were half and half.

And so this man walked over and he said, "Excuse me, I can't help but notice that you all are sharing your lunch and you're dividing your lunch in half. And if you will allow me, I would like to buy you a lunch so you don't have to share this one."

And the husband said, "Oh no, no, no. No. We have been married 60 years and it's always been 50/50 with us. Everything is 50/50. We share everything." And the guy said, "Oh, okay." But he noticed that the wife was just sitting there. She wasn't eating. She was sitting there with her hands folded in her lap watching her husband eat.

And he says, "Well, ma'am, aren't you going to eat your lunch?" She said, "Oh yeah, but it's his turn with the teeth." When you get old, all kinds of crazy things start happening. Amen. So eventually every one of us, if the Lord doesn't come in the rapture, we're all going back to the dirt. Amen.

We're all going back to the dirt. Have you ever pulled out an old photo album that you haven't looked at for years and years, and you see yourself and you do a double take? How many know what I'm talking about? It wasn't too long ago I was going through them to get some pictures for my mom's party, so I was seeing some stuff that was going back when my 20s and 30s.

And I looked at them, I said, "Wow, you were pretty back then. What happened?" Amen. And you see, you see and you realize because it happens gradually. And the other thing that happens, like my mom just got this cataract off her eye, but see what happens is, even if you don't get cataracts, and they claim if you live long enough you will, but you know after about 40 and then definitely after 50 you have to have glasses to read and things, and then you got to get stronger ones and stronger ones.

And I think the Lord may have allowed that to happen because unless you put glasses on and look at yourself in the mirror, you don't see some of those flaws and wrinkles and stuff. You put the glasses on and you think, "Oh my goodness!" Amen.

Okay, enough of frivolity. Here, the point I hope I'm making is this: no matter who we are, what we are, what we do, we're going to return to the dirt. One of the ways that God humbled man, although He made us in His likeness and in His image and He created Adam was brilliant.

We have seen and heard of brilliant minds amongst men, people like Albert Einstein. Amen. We've heard of men like him. We've heard of men like Abraham Lincoln. We've heard of men like George Washington Carver. We've heard even in our day men like Steve Jobs who created Apple.

And these people that create these things, we've heard of these brilliant minds. Amen. As brilliant as they are, they're still going to go to the dust. My understanding is that Albert Einstein donated his brain to science and I guess somewhere it's in a jar somewhere, I don't know where it is. But that brilliant man, one of the most brilliant men that's ever lived, amen, his body is in the ground. He's turned to dirt. Amen.

So God created us out of dirt so that no matter how high and mighty we become in this life, Job said it this way: "Naked I came into this world, naked I came out of my mother's womb, and naked I'm going to depart." Amen. The only part of you that is going to exist eternally is your never-dying spirit and soul.

That's the part of you that is eternal. Amen. And that ought to tell us that why would we let this human body that's going to go back to dirt in the end, why would we let it drag us to hell just to satisfy its lust? Let that sink in for a moment. You know those lust of the flesh that are so strong and rise up so strong in you?

The Bible calls it the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life. He said that's all that is out there in the world. And it's not the love of the Father because all of that is going to pass away, and the doer thereof. Amen. And that is why we've got to crucify this flesh, Paul said, with the affections and lusts thereof. Mortified!

You know what the word mortify means? It doesn't mean to be embarrassed. I know we use it, "I was mortified." If you were mortified, you wouldn't be saying that because you'd be dead. But I understand we use it as a figure of speech, "I was so embarrassed I wanted to die." You don't literally want to die, you just want to disappear because you're embarrassed for the moment.

But in the Bible, it's a very strong word: mortify. Let me put it to you this way: put to death. Kill! Crucify the flesh with the affections and lusts thereof. Because this flesh is made of dirt. And no matter how much you feed it and you can take it to the nicest restaurants there are, and yes, you should take care of this body because it's the only one that you have and it's the temple of the living God.

So you should feed it right and take care of it right. But when it comes to the lust and the motions of sin that rise up in the flesh, you got to put them to death. You got to say, "You're going back to dirt." Hey, you know that? You're going back to dirt! Because I'm getting a new body.

And the new body that I'm getting, the Bible says is incorruptible and undefiled and immortal. So it's not going to die and it's incorruptible, it's not going to be tempted again to sin. Oh, you should have got happy right there. You should have got happy right there!

It won't be tempted to sin anymore. It's incorruptible. That's what it means. Because immortal took in the idea of it won't decay and die. So the incorruptible means power of sin will not be there anymore. Amen. And it's undefiled. It's going to be perfect. So perfect.

I'll tell you how perfect it's going to be. Paul said in Philippians 3 and 20, "He's going to change our vile body and make it unto His glorious body." John said, "Beloved, now are we the sons of God, the children of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be. But we know this: when we see Him, we will be just like Him. Hallelujah! We will be just like Him!"

That's 1 John 3:1 and 2, and then he went on to say this, verse 3: "And everyone that has this hope purgeth himself." So we have to put this body to death, and when we put it in the right perspective, amen, we're talking about sin now. We're not talking about abusing your body.

If you abuse your body and all you eat is a bunch of fast food and junk food and bad food, you'll probably die sooner. You won't go to hell, you'll still go to heaven, but you'll just get there quicker if you develop diseases that come from that. Amen.

But when you have the perspective that God humbled this body, when it says in Philippians what I just quoted, it said He will change our vile body. The word vile there in a little bit is misleading because when we think of vile, we think of the really deepest dregs of sin. But what the better word is is this body of humiliation.

That's the true meaning, this body of humiliation. Why? This body is humiliated even though it's made in the image of God, it's made from dirt. So we need to crucify the flesh with the affections and lusts thereof and mortify the deeds of the body on this earth. And one way we can do that is make no provision for the flesh to fulfill it in the lust thereof.

Make no provision for the flesh. So you know what lust the devil has more success in tempting you with. Amen. You know that. If you had a hard, hard time of getting the victory in the beginning when you first got saved, and you might have had a problem with cigarettes or drugs or alcohol, you knew you had to stay a million miles away from those things.

You couldn't go out with your friends and go to the bar and say, "Well, I'm just going to sit here and drink a Coke." Amen. Because you knew you would end up being tempted and you would do it. Whatever it is. If it's a sexual sin, if you had a lot of sexual sin when you before you came to God, then you have to make no provision for that. Amen.

You know that you shouldn't be with the opposite sex, or God forbid the other way today, you have to say you got to say so many things include everybody, but you know what I'm trying to say. You don't put yourself in a compromising position. Amen.

And now you have to also worry about the eye gate, the lust of the eye. The lust of the eye because now people don't have to sneak down to Baltimore Street. Just go on their computer, on your phone, and there's all this lust there, stirring up the lust. You have to make no provision for it. You need to put filters on your computer if that's your problem.

You need to have accountability if that's your problem. You can't make provision for it because if you do, you're going to fall into it. How many know what I'm saying? And why would you let this bag of dirt drag your eternal, never-dying soul to hell for momentary pleasure?

There is power in the blood of Jesus! There is power in the blood of Jesus! Amen. So we finished up with the first one, number one. How God humbles man. He had to do it because He took a risk in creating him in His own image and His own likeness.

Having seen what happened to Lucifer, God had to build in certain safeguards for man not to fall because of that. And the first one was the way He created us out of the dirt. We've got three more to go, and we'll do those next week. And they will go by quite quickly because I took a lot of time to lay the foundation about Satan. But next week we'll just go with the next three. Amen. And you don't want to miss them because I know especially number four is going to speak to every person here personally. Amen.

Sharon Hardy Knotts: So we're going to close the service this morning. If you're here today and you say, "Sister Sharon, I really enjoyed the message, but I do need prayer." I came this morning believing that I was going to have prayer. We don't want to close the service without giving you an opportunity to come. If you want me to agree in prayer with you, come on up here and we'll pray with you now.

Amen. What a remarkable word, 4 Ways God Humbles Man. Lucifer the light bearer was the most exotic and wisest creature of all God's angelic beings. After his lightning fall from heaven along with one-third of the angels whom he convinced to join him in his rebellion to dethrone God, God created mankind in his own image and likeness. This far exceeded the glory of cherubim and angels.

Wasn't this risky? If Lucifer fell because of his superlative beauty, could not man made in the image of God also be tempted by pride? Yes, so God put in place safeguards to keep pride from destroying man like it did Lucifer.

This teaching, 4 Ways God Humbles Man, is available on a 2-CD set for a love gift to the radio ministry of $15 or more. Request SK-221, mail to Sound of Faith, P.O. Box 1744, Baltimore, Maryland 21203 or go to our e-store on soundoffaith.org where MP3s are available.

But to order by mail, send a minimum love gift of $15, request SK-221, mail to P.O. Box 1744, Baltimore, Maryland 21203. Until next time, this is Sharon Hardy Knotts saying Maranatha!