.  Living Hope Fellowship Church....Sermons by the Pastor 

FELLOWSHIP OF DARKNESS

by Pastor Kevin Badgley 12/26/93 P.M.

            God wants you to keep your blessing and anointing, so keep your hands clean.  Don’t be a partaker of wickedness.  2 Corinthians 6:14 says, “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?”  Verse 16 says, “. . . for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”  That means as a believer you take God with you wherever you go!  When you fellowship with unbelievers you will sooner or later touch unclean things that defile you.  Verse 17-18 tells us, “. . . be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing. . . .”

            How can you be a witness to someone who scoffs at the things of God?  I’m not talking about the initial reaction of a person who will later be saved.  I’m talking about casting pearls before swine as in Matthew 7:6. 

            There is to be a sanctification, a progressive move of God in our lives.  One critical point of this is not willfully mingling with unbelievers.  I’m talking about joining lodges, clubs, or groups where a Christian calls a sinner their brother or sister.  The Bible teaches that anyone who is born again by the blood of Jesus must be separate from them!  See Leviticus 20:24-26.  God has severed you from other people.  You can bring the Gospel to them when God opens the door. 

            God wants us to forfeit all our old worldly friendships.  When I got saved and filled with the Holy Ghost, I separated myself from the old crowd.  You cannot have fellowship with Satan and with God.  Some of this we wrestle because we have no choice.  We live in this world, but Jesus prayed in John 17:15, “I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil.”

            Ecumenicalism is when all religions get together in league.  They say, I will compromise with you a little if you will compromise with me a little, and they call that becoming one in the spirit, but it is the spirit of Anti‑Christ and the devil!  Compromise means “surrender”.

            Some sinners make friends with you so they can get you to do what they are doing.  They will also use your blessing to get them something! 

Backsliders are miserable and deceitful and want company in their misery.  If you hold fast, they might come to themselves and return to the heavenly Father!

            Your senses get dull when you compromise with those who are bound of the enemy!  Things start happening in your judgment.  They will woo you around to where you have a certain amount of respect for them, but if they aren’t serving God, they are serving the devil, and it does not matter what they say otherwise! 

            Numbers are no proof of truth.  Eight hundred and fifty prophets of Baal prophesied the opposite of what Micaiah, one of God’s prophets, said.  That was 850 to 1, but his prophecy was true!  The 850 spoke lies.  It may seem that you are following God by yourself for a while, but heaven is going to be crowded!

            You can’t trust a child of the devil.  Sooner or later they will sell you out to save their own skin.  Don’t ignore flashing red lights and go on in your own will.

If you stay around unbelievers, sooner or later you will defend their actions and say, “Well, I can understand why they did that.”  You cannot condone sin and wrong doing!  There are no exceptions to God’s rules.

            Unbelievers will intimidate or mock Christians, but sometimes they back off if you will.  You don’t want them to think you are a sissy, or a fool, or not cool, so what will you do?  Meanwhile the devil is closing in for the kill!  God may get you in a place where you have to cry out to Him.  Don’t think that you can always pray through.  The Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul.

            About 30 years ago there were millions of black birds spreading a lung disease.  They roosted heavily around the river in our area.  Histoplasmosis comes from their manure.  Once in a while you could look up in their flight path and see a red‑wing black bird or a cardinal.  Ft. Campbell helicopters came and sprayed them by the millions.  Sometimes there was a dead song bird among them.  They weren’t carrying the disease, but they were in the wrong crowd, and they got the same judgment!  When Jesus comes I don’t want Him to find me where I don’t belong!  If I’m around sinners when the trumpet sounds, it will only be because I’m trying to get them saved!

            Jesus gives us the ability to be separate, not that we would be snobs or holier‑than‑thou, but that we are changed from what we used to be.  Let’s not use our liberty to go back into the world! 

© Living Hope Fellowship, Inc.
  Email the Pastor  

livinghope@hughes.net

Phone # 618-634-2541