Join Sharon Knotts in a transformative discussion on spiritual struggles and the role of belief. With references from Romans and Corinthians, this episode highlights the significance of preaching and the necessity of faith to overcome spiritual blindness. Reveal the reasons behind self-righteousness and other barriers people face and learn how you can witness effectively in a time of unprecedented access to the gospel.
Greetings, friends and new listeners. Thank you for tuning into the R.G. Hardy Ministries program because we know that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. I’m Sharon Knotts, and I’m excited to tell you that today’s message is exactly the tools you need to be an effectual witness of the gospel to unbelievers, sinners, and backsliders. The Holy Spirit downloaded this message into my spirit fast and furiously over a two-day period. And I believe it holds great truths to how we can reach the unsaved, even the most skeptical. It’s entitled, Eight Reasons Some Are Not Saved. Hallelujah. How many love to get into the Word of God? Amen. I’m going to need you to probably lick your index finger and your thumbs because you’re going to be doing a lot of page turning. Amen, because I have a lot of scriptures to give you. And some I will just quote to save time. But there are some I just feel that it gets in your spirit more if you can read it. I don’t know. That’s how it works with me. And maybe it works that way with a lot of you. But actually, I had another message planned for this week and worked on it all week. And Friday night when I went home from church, the Lord just turned me around and I’ve been fast and furiously trying to put it together. So if I hesitate here and there, it’s because I can’t read my own notes because I didn’t have time to really make them nice and pretty. But I believe it’s what the Lord wants today. And today’s message I’m going to entitle, Eight Reasons Why Some Are Not Saved. There may be a lot more. I don’t claim to have an exhaustive study. But these are eight reasons that I have seen by the Holy Spirit’s help. Eight reasons why some are not saved. Let me tell you, the Bible says that this is the easiest time there ever could be to be saved.
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Amen.
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The Bible says in the last days, sayeth the Lord, I’ll pour out my spirit upon all flesh. And that whosoever will call upon the name of the Lord, that’s how easy it is to be saved. Even though we live in the most wicked time of all, the Bible says in the last days perilous times would come. There would be so much evil and wickedness, and it would go from wickedness to wickedness because that’s how sin does. It just gets worse with every generation. And Jesus said it would be in a wicked, perverse, crooked, adulterous generation. Do you think that that is a good description of our day? And yet there is a wonderful, powerful verse in Romans 5.20 that says, where sin does abound… the grace of God does much more abound. That tells us that no matter how wicked and evil and how great sin is, God’s grace is greater yet. And it is still easier to be saved today than it could ever be in spite of the fact that we have so much sin and depravity around us. Amen? Because of the grace of God. Now turn with me in Romans the 10th chapter. And we’ll look at these verses together. And actually he’s quoting from the Old Testament and from the book of Joel. And Paul now is quoting this and expounding upon it in Romans 10. And let’s look at verse 13. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Can it get any easier than that? When you call on Jesus and you call him Lord, you are saying, I am submitting myself to you. I’m opening up my heart and my life for you to come in. And there is no other name that is given under heaven whereby men must be saved but the name of Jesus. That’s Acts 4.12. So whosoever will call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Now he goes on to reason. That’s the fact. You can’t change that. God has said just call on Jesus and you will be saved. But how shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in him in whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall he preach except he be sent? Or they be sent, because there’s more than one. As it is written, how beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace and bring glad tidings of good things. Amen. So we find that anyone that calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. But, of course, they can’t call on somebody that they don’t believe in. Because earlier in this same chapter, you can read it later, you have to believe in your heart and confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and that God raised him from the dead. But how can you believe on him? Amen? You have to believe in order to call. But how can you believe on him except you have heard of him? Amen. And how can you hear of him except somebody preach to you? And how can anybody preach except they be sent? Now I got to tell you, it’s nearly impossible to live in the United States of America and not hear about Jesus Christ. In fact, in the dark so-called continent of Africa, today they have so much revival that they’re now calling it the continent of light. There is so much gospel going forth like it’s never gone before. And in the technological age that we live in, that people can hear the gospel on the internet, I heard something the other day that I had to laugh about it. It was so cute. And that is that up in Siberia, where people literally live in ice igloos, and they are totally secluded from all of civilization, they now have made centers where the people get on reindeer, and they travel for 300 miles to come to these centers where they have satellite TV. Amen. And they can come now, and on that satellite TV, they’ve got Christian stations like TBN, and they can hear the gospel. I don’t care where you are. He said this gospel shall be preached to the ends of the world. And listen to this. And when this gospel has been preached to the ends of the world, then the end shall come. Amen. So if you’re not ready, you better start getting real nervous. When they start hearing the gospel in Siberia and they got to get there by reindeer, it tells me the time of the Lord is coming close. Because Jesus, when he left this earth, he said, go and teach all nations, red, yellow, black, and white. They’re all precious in my sight. I don’t care if it’s the nations of Africa or if it’s the people in Siberia at the North Pole. He said, go and teach all nations and baptize them and teach them whatsoever things I have commanded you in my word. That’s Matthew 28, 18. And then he said in Mark 16, 17, go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. Amen? So somebody’s got to go. You cannot spell the word gospel without G-O. Go. The gospel means you’ve got to go and give them the good news. So someone’s got to preach that they can hear, that they can believe, and that they can call on the name of Jesus. But in spite of that, let’s look at verse 16. But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah said, Lord, who hath believed our report? Now think about this. In spite of the guarantee that we have just read, it’s guaranteed. If somebody goes and somebody preaches, somebody will hear, somebody will believe, call on the Lord and they shall be saved. There’s nothing the devil can do about it. But yet they have not all believed. So now all of a sudden we’re all excited. We’re ready to go and we’re ready to preach and we’re ready to tell them. And yet sometimes they look at us and they reject us. They have not all believed the gospel. What is wrong here? They have not all obeyed to call on the name of the Lord. The answer, Paul said, you don’t have to turn there. In Romans 11, 7, he said, there were some that believed. But they did not all believe because only a remnant believed out of Israel and the rest were blinded. The rest were blinded. Amen? And I’m telling you that today the reason why many people are not saved, it’s the same cause, it’s because they are spiritually blinded. When a person is spiritually blinded, you can preach the best gospel message you have ever preached in your life. And it will have no effect on them. Let’s turn to 2 Corinthians 4 and 3. But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost, in whom the God of this world… Who’s the God of this world? Satan hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them. So the failure of some to believe the gospel and be saved is because Satan is a mind blinder. He blinds them with the spirit of error so that they cannot receive the spirit of truth. Turn to 1 John. That’s going to be all the way back there. Your revelation. 1 John, the fourth chapter. And let’s look at the first four verses. Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits. Plural. whether they are of God, because many false prophets or false spirits, people prophesying under a false spirit are going out into the world. But hereby know ye the Spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God. And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God. And that is that spirit of Antichrist. And we see that everywhere. People don’t believe that Jesus is the Son of God. whereof ye have heard that it should come. And I’m telling you, it’s already now in the world. Now, he’s not talking about the Antichrist, capital A. He’s talking about the spirit that’s anti-Christian, anti-God, anti-Jesus, hostile. How many ever met that spirit? He said, John said, it’s already in the world. You’re of God, little children, and you’ve overcome them, that spirit of anti-Christ and anti-Jesus. You don’t let that upset you, because why? You know that you’re of God, and greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world. But here’s the problem. They are of the world, therefore they speak of the world, and the world hears them. But we’re of God. And he that knoweth God hears us. He that is not of God doesn’t hear us. And hereby we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. So in many cases, they cannot hear us. We’re preaching to them the gospel and they can’t hear us because they’re blinded by Satan with the spirit of error. Now, Paul, who wrote 2 Corinthians about how Satan blinds their minds, he understood spiritual blindness because before he was converted, he was an activist against Christianity. He hated Christians so much, he spent his life on a campaign to round them up anywhere he could find them. He would go and round them up and drag them before the leaders to be condemned, to be stoned, and to be killed. And he said, when they were being killed, I raised my voice against them. I said, yeah, I’m guilty. Kill them. Stone them. One time he stood by and held the coats of everybody else so they could stone Stephen to death. And Stephen’s face shone like an angel, and he said, I see the heavens open, and Jesus Christ standing on the right hand of the Father, ready to receive my spirit. Here I go. And Paul stood there and saw the Bible says that Stephen’s face shone like an angel. Paul stood there, saw that, heard that, and it didn’t make a bit of difference. He went on looking for Christians to kill. Because he was blind. He was blind. And when he rounded up all the ones he could find in Jerusalem, he said, I’m going to go to Damascus. It was a big city in Syria, over 100 miles away. So he goes to Damascus so he can find the Christians there, drag them back to Jerusalem so he can get them killed too. But on his way, God knocked him off his donkey, his horse, whatever he was riding. Amen. Knocked him down. He saw a bright light. It was so bright it blinded him. I’m talking about literally he could not see. God had to blind him literally in his eyes so that he could understand how blind he was spiritually. And for three days he went around groping like a blind man. And when he got knocked down, he heard the voice come from heaven say, why are you persecuting me? Amen. Not why are you persecuting the saints? Why are you persecuting the Christians? Why are you persecuting me? So he said, well, who are you? He said, I am Jesus whom you’re persecuting because when you persecute one of God’s little ones, you’re persecuting him. Amen. So don’t be upset when the world persecutes you. They’re taking on God himself. They’re taking on Jesus and the Holy Ghost. And he’ll be able to fight your battle. Amen. So he was blind for three days. Until God sent someone to pray for him and open his eyes up. And so he could literally see again. And then, oh my God, he was converted. And what I love about Paul, the Satan’s zeal. That he had to go around and sock it to the Christians. Now he was going around and socking it to the devil. He didn’t waste any time. He got busy. And I want you to see what he said. In 1 Timothy, you don’t have to turn there. He says, I was a blasphemer. I was a persecutor. I was injurious. That means I injured people. I hurt them. I hurt them bodily. But he said, I did it ignorantly. Yes. unbelief isn’t that beautiful and he was the when he said that it’s because when he thought about it he was amazed at the fact that the Lord had put him in the ministry and enabled him to be able to preach the gospel after all that he had done to the saints of God but he said the Lord had mercy of me on me not only forgiven me but putting me in the ministry to preach the gospel because he knows that when I did it I did it in ignorance I was blind He said in Galatians 1.13, you heard about my conduct of my time past before I got saved. He said, beyond measure, I persecuted the church of God. And listen to this. He said, and I wasted it. I always thought that was a term that just, you know, recently came into being, you know, when you waste somebody. We think about, you know, you shoot them and kill them. But it says that Paul wasted the church. Amen? He said that, in fact, he was so vehement in his hatred against them, he not only, now this has really showed you how much the devil hates the gospel and hates your testimony. He not only wanted to kill them, he wanted to try to force them to blaspheme. Now I’m going to read it to you. You don’t have to go there. Acts 26, 9 through 11. He says, I thought with myself that I ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth, which thing I also did in Jerusalem. And many of the saints did I shut up in prison, having received authority from the chief priest. And when they were put to death, I gave my voice against them, and I punished them often in every synagogue, and I compelled them to blaspheme. And being exceedingly mad against them, I persecuted them even unto strange cities. He went way out. Far from Jerusalem, he was bent on killing the Christians. And every time he looked back at it, it had to put a pain in his heart to think what he did. But he just, that all the more he was so grateful that God had forgiven him and put him in the ministry. So I want you to see that Paul understood blindness. He understood that. And we’ve got to understand when we’re dealing with people that they are blind. They are blind. We cannot all get an attitude and get all bent out of shape because they didn’t get saved when we gave them the best presentation we could have possibly given them and wash our hands and say, oh, they can just go be with the devil. No, they’re blind. We got to pray that God take the mind blinders off so the light can get in. Now I’m going to give you eight things that they’re blind to or why they’re blind. Okay, first of all, they are blind by self-righteousness. I’m okay. You’re okay. We’re all okay. We’re all good people. I’m a good person. How many know that if you were to go walking down the streets around the city and you said, I’m conducting a survey, do you think you’re going to go to heaven? Why, absolutely. Why do you think you’re going to go to heaven? Because I’m a good person. I don’t hurt anybody. I try to be good. I give to the Salvation Army every Christmas. And they’ll start telling you all the good things that they do. And they think their goodness is good enough to get them into heaven. But there’s a huge problem with that. Because in order for you to say something is good, you have to have a standard, okay? What’s the standard of good, okay? You know, when the Consumer Reports or the United Laboratories, before they put their seal of approval on something, they test it all out and they’ll say, okay, this one was good, okay? But this one was better, and this one was best. But there’s got to be a standard. Well, this one, whatever it might have been, you know, if it could be air conditioner, it put out so much cold air, but this one put out more cold air, but this one put out a lot more cold air. And this one only used this much electricity, et cetera, et cetera. They have a standard. There has to be a standard, or you cannot say, put a label on what it is. When people go around saying they’re good, by whose standard? By your standard? Well, what if my standard’s different from your standard? You say that’s good, but I say, no, no, I think this is good. But no, she says this is good. Well, the other person thinks this is good. So whose standard are we going to use? We can’t have a thousand different standards for good. We’ve got to have one. Amen. So who’s going to decide what it is? I’m not going to let you decide for me what’s good because I may not agree with your good and vice versa. There has to be a standard of good and there’s only one that’s good and that’s God. So the only standard is God’s standard. So when people say, well, I’m good, and they think they’re going to get into heaven, they’re trying to get into heaven on their standard. But the Bible says there’s only one perfect one, and that’s Jesus Christ, the righteous one. And you’ve got to have his righteousness in order to meet God’s standard of good. See, some people are blinded because they think they’re good. And maybe they are good compared to so-and-so. Compared to that guy, I’m a saint. Compared to her, I’m an angel. But are you good compared to the standard that God has put in his word? And we can simplify it real easy and come down to the Ten Commandments. Amen? We can simplify it because that’s just the broad, broad… and then there’s a lot of things to come under that. So you see, the definition of I’m a good person is not going to get you into heaven. Self-righteousness. See, Paul tried all that. He said, before I was converted, if you want to go by the law, I was a Hebrew of Hebrews. Amen. I kept the law. I ate a kosher diet. I went to church, synagogue every Sabbath. And I did all of these things. And I want you to know that if you want to go by the law of righteousness, I was a very righteous person. He said, and I defended the faith. I blindly, but with everything within me, I defended the faith and what I believed in. amen so Paul understood that what about the Jews we just read that in general the Jews did not receive only a remnant did well why why was that so it tells us and you don’t have to go there but if you’re taking notes Romans 9 31 and 32 but Israel which followed after the law of righteousness hath not attained in the law of righteousness why Because they sought it not by faith, but as it were, by the works of the law. They tried to go by their good works, going every Sabbath to the synagogue, keeping the dietary laws, circumcising all the male children. All of these, you know, and when really it was 613 laws that they expanded, that they had to keep. And he said they were trying to do it that way. But that is not going to get you in. Let’s look at a really good example. I love this story. Mark the 10th chapter. You can turn with me there because we need to look at this. We’re going to hear in the voice and the words of this young man, we’re going to hear a lot of people that you meet in your life, on your job, in your home, wherever. You’re going to hear their voice through his words. Mark 10, 17. And when he, that would be Jesus, was going forth into the way, there came one running and kneeled to him and asked him, good master, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life? He started off calling Jesus good. And Jesus said, why callest thou me good? There is none good but one, that is God. Let me take one second to say, Jesus was not denying that he was good. He wasn’t refusing the compliment. He was saying, there’s only one good, and that’s God, so if you think I’m good, you are just now confessing that I’m God. I’m sure there were a lot of people standing around that heard that and went, oh! He just said he was God. Yes? That’s what he always said. Amen? It’s exactly what he said. So if he didn’t mean it, then he was a liar, a lunatic, or he really was God. You’ve got to decide. Okay, so let’s go on. Thou knowest the commandments, Jesus speaking. Do not commit adultery, do not kill, do not steal, do not bear false witness, or do not lie. Defraud not, don’t steal. Honor thy father and mother. And he answered and said unto him, the young man said, Master, all these I have kept from my youth. I told you I’m a good person too. I’m a good guy. I’ve done all these from a little boy. And I love this next verse. Then Jesus beholding him loved him. I want you to know that Jesus loves every sinner. I want you to know there’s not one sinner, whether he’s kind of good like this guy or in the very pit, in the pigsty of sin. Jesus loves the sinner. Don’t ever forget that when you’re talking to a sinner. Remember, Jesus died for them. If you see that person as someone Jesus died for, it will greatly influence the way you treat them and how you speak to them. Amen, amen. Surely the Holy Spirit has birthed this word into our hearts so we can be able and effectual witnesses of the New Testament. I believe you can discern the spirit of conviction that was upon the delivery as these truths penetrated the hearts of the hearers, shedding light in dark places and peeling away calluses of resistance to the truth. It also serves to enlighten us as how to deal with hard cases when sharing the gospel. Paul said that Satan is a mind blinder, and he uses these eight strategies to keep people from getting saved. I’m a good person. number two not ready to give up their sins number three no fear of god number four no fear of hell number five i’ve got plenty of time number six the fear of man number seven there are too many hypocrites 8. I just can’t live the Christian life. Each of these points is scripturally supported and there’s enough ammunition in this teaching to prepare you to be a powerful soul winner. So be sure to add this message to your spiritual library. For a love gift of $10 or more for the radio ministry, request offer SK151. That’s SK as in Sharon Knotts, 151. Our mailing address is R.G. Hardy Ministries, P.O. Box 1744, Baltimore, Maryland, 21203. Or if you prefer, order online at RGHardy.org. That’s RGHardy.org. Again, to receive eight reasons some are not saved, on CD, offer SK-151. Send your love gift of $10 or more to P.O. Box 1744, Baltimore, Maryland, 21203. Until next time, Maranatha.
