1 Timothy chapter 4, let me read to
you once again from verse 1.
There Paul says, Now the Spirit expressly says
that in latter times some will depart from
the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and
doctrines of demons, speaking lies in hypocrisy, having
their own conscience seared with a hot iron,
forbidding to marry and commanding to abstain from
foods which God created to be received with
thanksgiving by those who believe and know the
truth.
For every creature of God is good, and
nothing is to be refused if it is
received with thanksgiving, for it is sanctified by
the word of God in prayer.
If you instruct the brethren in these things,
you will be a good minister of Jesus
Christ.
Remember, Paul is writing to Timothy and he's
instructing him on how to conduct himself in
the house of God, the church of the
living God.
And so Paul gives Timothy this insight into
the future that there will come a time
when people are going to depart from the
faith.
They're going to come under the influence of
demonic teaching.
And so he warns about that, and then
he goes on to exhort Timothy to instruct
the people in the right things.
And the contrast here really, in many ways,
is the contrast between the grace of God
and all of the various manifestations of legalism
that can potentially crop up within the church.
So when he says to Timothy in verse
six, if you instruct the brethren in these
things, that these things are really in contrast
to the false teachings, the false teachings of
legalism, forbidding to marry, commanding to abstain from
meat.
So.
Paul's.
Setting forth a contrast to that.
So what would be.
The these things in contrast to those legalistic
things, it would really be the goodness of
God, the grace of God and the liberty
that comes to us in Christ.
That's what Paul is saying to Timothy.
Timothy, if you instruct the people in the
goodness of God, in the grace of God
and in the freedom that they have in
Christ Jesus, you will be a good minister.
That's what a good minister does.
He instructs the people of God in the
goodness of God and in the grace of
God.
You see, God wants us to be free.
He wants us to be basking in his
goodness and his grace.
He wants our lives to be full of
joy.
And if we get caught up in legalism
of any sort, the joy is gone.
We lose sight of the goodness and we
forget all about the grace.
And so we have got to keep before
our minds constantly the grace of God.
And this, of course, was Paul's great mission
to bring the people back to an understanding
of the grace of God or actually to
bring it to them originally.
But then he had to keep fighting to
oftentimes bring them back to it because they
would so often drift away, Paul says here.
In contrast to those who are forbidding to
marry, commanding to abstain from foods and so
forth.
He says that these these things that they're
restricting people from these are things that were
actually created by God and to be received
with Thanksgiving by those who believe and know
the truth for every creature of God is
good and nothing is to be refused.
The reason why Paul is passionate about this
is because ultimately the very.
Conception of God is what's at stake.
You know, your life will, to a large
degree, as a Christian, your life and your
experience will be determined by your concept of
God.
If your concept of God is something other
than a God of grace and goodness who
wants to give us freedom.
Your your life experience will be a miserable
life experience.
You know, when you look at religion, religion
is legalism in a variety of different forms,
it doesn't matter where you look in the
realm of religion, you find that there's always
a work ethic attached to it, and ultimately
it's a it's a legalistic system and it
breeds one of two things.
It breeds.
Either pride.
Or it breeds despair, usually for the most
part, it breeds despair, people living under these
burdens.
And feeling hopeless and like they're never going
to make it.
And there's guilt and fear and all of
these kinds of things.
I mean, you know, maybe you've read some
of the responses or maybe you've even heard
some of the things that have been said
in reference to the tsunamis.
Now, of course, those destructive waves struck in
regions where Hinduism and Islam and Buddhism are
the dominant religions.
And what what is being sensed in what
the people are saying is that they somehow
are connecting this to God.
Their their concept is that God has done
this to them and God has done this
to them because they haven't been devout enough
in their religion, they haven't sacrificed enough, they
haven't given enough, they haven't obeyed enough or
something like that.
And that's really a picture.
Of what we're talking about here, that's what
religion does, it breeds this sense of condemnation
and guilt and fear and dread of God
so that you walk around in fear that
lightning is going to strike you or something
like that, or when any little thing goes
wrong and automatically, oh, that's God, he's after
me, he's he's punishing me because I did
this or I didn't do that or I
thought this or I didn't think that.
And so you see what happens with.
Legalism, it causes us to have a distorted
concept of God, and that's why Paul fights
against it constantly.
Because this is not God.
God is not like what he is so
often being misrepresented as being like.
God is not petty, he's not hung up
on little unimportant kinds of things.
You remember how Jesus would rebuke the Pharisees?
He was so upset with them because ultimately
they were misrepresenting God.
That was the biggest problem with them.
The people watching the Pharisees thought that God
was like them.
Now, how did the Pharisees treat the common
people?
They treated them with disdain.
They treated them with contempt.
They would.
Snarl at them and, you know, give the
impression that.
They were worthless and and, you know, bound
for judgment when a Pharisee would walk through
a crowd, he would put his robe as
close to himself as possible, lest he would
rub against the centers, and.
This, of course, was creating an impression among
the people that this is how God is.
But nothing could be further from the truth,
and so it's because the concept of God
is at stake here.
It's because of that that Paul so heroically
really defends the position of God's grace.
So he says, this is what we need
to understand.
We need to understand that God created things
to be received by him with thanksgiving.
And that every creature of God is good
and it's not to be refused.
The word refused here could be translated, it's
not to be thrown out.
One of the.
Translations of the Bible renders the word tabooed.
What is something that is tabooed, something that
is tabooed is something that is forbidden.
Don't touch it, don't taste it, don't handle
it.
Paul addressed that with the Colossians.
The heathen religions are full of taboos.
And as I said, subsequently, the people live
in bondage to fear, they're always afraid that
they're going to be doing something that is
offending God and therefore they live in in
fear and dread of some judgment coming upon
them because they're everything's taboo.
Now, that's the sort of the essence of
demonic religion to bring people into bondage to
these these petty rules and nonsensical superstitions and
things like that.
That's the essence of of heathenism.
There should be nothing even remotely like that
among God's people.
But sadly, that kind of stuff is crept
into the church and it's been around for
ever, it seems Paul was battling it in
his day and and they needed to keep
on battling right down to today because the
church is still full of these kinds of
things, superstitions and phobias and things that develop
in people's minds because they've been falsely instructed.
They've been in they've been instructed in the
wrong concept of God to think that God
is primarily full of wrath and anxiously awaiting
their slip up so he can judge them.
Nothing can be further from the truth.
And so it's the goodness of God, the
grace of God and the liberty that comes
in Jesus.
That's what Paul is saying to Timothy.
Timothy instruct the people in these things.
That's what you want to teach God's people.
You know, I do think that today, because
of certain segments of the church being caught
up in various forms of legalism and legalism
can be very blatant and obvious.
It can also be very subtle.
And not so obvious, but yet it's definitely
there.
I have encountered situations where.
Legalism was present, but it wasn't so obvious
that you could just point out, say, oh,
there it is right there.
Sometimes in some in some senses, you couldn't
even necessarily see it, but you could feel
it.
It's like an atmosphere, it's like a presence.
And.
It's because of the presence of legalism within
the church that I think a lot of
people are turned off by their perception of
Christianity.
That's what they think of it as they
think of it as.
A system of rigid rules and regulations, and
so they're.
They're repelled by it, they they don't want
to move in that direction, they don't want
to think in those terms, but it's a
misrepresentation of what it is.
And again, the unfortunate thing is that quite
often it's been the church that's given the
false view to people, this whole thing we
talked about it previously, but this whole thing
of forbidding to marry and commanding to abstain
from foods.
This was all the outworking of the ascetic
mentality, which was that the the the true
way to holiness or godliness was intense denial
of of the physical desires.
This was the thinking that somehow.
Suppression of the natural desires equaled or, you
know, led to a greater degree of holiness.
And that's what Paul is fighting against here.
Listen to what he goes on to say,
which says that if you instruct them in
these things, you'll be a good minister of
Jesus Christ, nourished in the words of faith
and of good doctrine, which you have carefully
followed.
But reject profane and old wives fables and
exercise yourself toward godliness or train yourself toward
godliness.
Now, listen for bodily exercise profits a little.
But godliness is profitable for all things, having
promise of the life that now is and
of that which is to come.
This is a faithful, sane and worthy of
all acceptance.
Now, I used to think when I read
this eighth verse that.
It was mainly dealing with just the whole
idea of, you know, working out, getting in
shape and.
Telling us, you know, not to put that
is too much of a priority, but to
concentrate on the things of the spirit.
You know, that's not really what it's talking
about, although it seems like it is in
our English translation.
And it seems like it is because that's
generally what we think of.
But it's not talking about that totally.
We have to understand that verse eight is
connected to verse three.
Verse seven is connected to verse three, the
wives fables that Paul says to Timothy to
reject the wives fables are what's declared in
verse three, forbidding to marry and commanding to
abstain from foods.
You see, here's what Paul is saying, and
this is what he's really talking about here.
It's that idea.
That.
True spirituality is manifested in a denial of
the flesh.
That's the path to true spirituality.
A lot of people think that.
But that's not it.
You see, when he says bodily exercise, he's
not talking about jumping jacks, he's not talking
about push ups, he's not talking about that.
He's talking about this teaching that had come
in that was saying in order to be
really spiritual, you must suppress all of the
fleshly tendencies.
Now, that sounds good and right, doesn't it?
But you see, it's not.
It's not accurate.
That's not what Christianity is about.
Buddhism is about that.
Buddhism is about suppressing.
Desire getting rid of desire, but that's not
what Christianity is about.
You see, Christianity is not about self-denial,
although a lot of people think it is.
Christianity is not about that.
It's about something totally different.
It's not about me giving all my effort
and my deep concentration toward suppressing.
My humanness.
That's what that was the mistake that they
made in the monasteries and the monasteries are
just the outworking of asceticism.
Asceticism is that that rigid denial of the
flesh.
But you know what happened in the monasteries,
they were in there suppressing the flesh with
every bit of strength they had, but they
found that, man, it wouldn't go away.
They locked themselves away from the world, thinking
that the only way to have victory is
to get as far away from the world
as possible.
But then, although they.
Isolated themselves, they found that there were still
all kinds of evil desires and things within
them.
There's another passage that Paul addresses the same
thing, and I want you to turn back
to Colossians with me.
The second chapter.
And let me show you what he's really
talking about here.
Colossians chapter two, verse 18.
He says, Let no one cheat you of
your reward, taking delight in false humility and
worship of angels, intruding into those things which
he has not seen vainly puffed up by
his fleshly mind and not holding fast to
the head from whom all the body nourished
and knit together by joints and ligaments grows
with the increase that is from God.
Therefore, now listen to what he says here.
If you died with Christ from the basic
principles of the world, why is the living
in the world?
Do you subject yourself to regulations?
Do not touch, do not taste, do not
handle which all concern things which perish with
the using according to the commandments and doctrines
of men.
You see, this is how you know if
the doctrine is from God or men, if
it's from men, it says, do not touch,
do not taste, do not handle.
That's.
That's where man is at, but that's that's
not from God.
Now, listen to what he says, though.
He says these things indeed have an appearance
of wisdom in self-imposed religion, false humility
and neglect or suppression of the body, but
they are of no value against the indulgence
of the flesh.
See what Paul is saying?
He says, yeah, this stuff looks good and
it sounds spiritual and you might think it's
right, because after all, of course, we ought
to be suppressing our desires and things like
that.
But he said, no, that's not the way
to do it.
That's his whole point.
That's not Christ way.
You see, here's what it comes down to.
It's not a matter of denying the flesh.
But rather, one of building up the spirit.
See, the Bible does not teach self-denial.
The Bible teaches that we're dead in Christ
and we need to realize that and consider
it to be a reality.
And that we are to put all of
our energy into.
Cultivating the life of the spirit.
I'm not to waste my energy on trying
to suppress the flesh, I'm to use all
my energy on cultivating the life of the
spirit.
Guess why?
When the spirit is strong, the flesh is
under control.
But people make the mistake of trying and
trying and trying and trying to control their
temper or to, you know, get their thought
life in order or whatever it is.
And they find that they fail over and
over and over and over and over again.
And they end up just condemned and wondering
if they're even really saved or if they're
ultimately going to make it to heaven.
It's because they're concentrating on the wrong thing.
So when Paul says back in chapter four,
verse eight.
For bodily exercise profits a little again, he's
not talking about getting in shape physically, he's
talking about this.
This contrast between the two ways, there's nothing
the matter with bodily exercise in the sense
that we think of it.
As long as it's in balance.
But in the way that Paul was speaking
to them.
As a means of attaining spirituality, that's not
the root, the root to spirituality is through
cultivating godliness.
So that's how we become godly, we become
godly by cultivating the spirit.
And and so that's why Paul says to
Timothy, Timothy, if you instruct them in these
things, what things the goodness of God, the
grace of God, the liberty that's in Christ
Jesus, when we get to know the goodness
of God and we get to know the
grace of God, all of these things.
These things build us up in the spirit
and they make for the kind of life
that God wants us to have a life
where we can freely enjoy with Thanksgiving the
things that God created for us to enjoy.
The person who is.
Miserable.
In their faith.
Is surely a poor advertisement for the kingdom.
And who is the person that's miserable in
their faith?
Well, that's quite often the person who's all
bound up in legalism.
They're miserable because they know they're failing and
and that's not attractive to people.
That's not anything that anyone is going to
rush to sign up for.
It's when somebody sees a person who is
full of joy, a person who is gracious
toward others, a person who just seems to,
you know, go about enjoying life in the
good sense.
Not involved in sinful things, but still having
a great time.
Man, that's the kind of person that people
are attracted to.
You see, the big lie of the devil
is that you've got to send to have
fun.
You can have the most wonderful and enjoyable
life imaginable.
And you don't have to do any of
the things that people normally think you have
to do in order to have a good
time.
Just enjoy the things that God did give
us.
And see, the problem with legalism is that
legalism deprives us of the good things that
God gave us, things that he intended us
to enjoy, that would be a reflection to
the world of the goodness of God.
Legalism forbids us, prohibits us from enjoying those
kinds of things.
You see, the legalist is marked by.
A great concern over nonessential things, a great
preoccupation with petty, unimportant things.
That's again what we see pictured so clearly
with the Pharisees.
And we don't have to look back that
far.
We can again find it.
Around us today.
Those people who are quick to condemn.
Just about anything and everything.
And so life becomes just this little, you
know, there's this little sliver here that you
can live in, and that's about all there
is to it.
And then what you're seen as is a
person who is against everything, is uptight about
everything, who can't do anything.
And people, like I said, they look at
that and they think, oh, I don't want
to be part of that.
And we have to be on our guard
against that.
In the church, historically, you've always had the
two extremes.
You have the extreme we're talking about of
legalism, and then you have people that swing
the pendulum all the way to the other
side where it's anything goes.
I can do anything.
It doesn't matter.
I'm saved by grace.
And so anything goes well.
That's not right either.
How do I how do I find that
middle path?
How do I strike the balance?
You know what?
If you just stick with the word of
God, you'll strike the balance.
You know, if you just stick with the
scriptures, you won't become a legalist, nor will
you become a licentious person who thinks you
can just do anything and still go to
heaven.
The Bible gives us the perfect balance.
It shows us that all things are given
to us richly to enjoy.
But God lays down the borders himself and
he tells us now these are the things
that you're not to be involved in.
You know how legalism happens, it happens because
people try to help God out.
People think, well, you know, God, your rule,
I see it there.
That doesn't look.
That doesn't look quite.
You know, rigid enough, I think we better.
We better extrapolate on it a bit.
The Pharisees.
You know what they did?
They were well-intentioned, but they made a
huge mistake.
Remember what happened?
Israel was sent into captivity because of their
sin, because of their idolatry.
They were there in Babylon for 70 years.
And at the end of 70 years, they
came back into the land and during that
period of time after the days of Nehemiah
and Ezra in what's known as the intertestamental
period.
Four hundred years known sometimes as the silent
years.
This group of men arose in Israel.
Who were so zealous for the law.
They began to study it diligently and they
began to communicate it to the people, no
longer did they leave that responsibility in the
hands of the priest, but they they developed
a whole new group of people that took
that upon themselves.
And their mission, their goal was to.
Understand the law, communicate the law and help
the people never to violate the law again.
So that Israel would never be led back
into captivity again.
So they took the law and they codified
it.
They broke it down.
They came up with 613 commandments.
And they thought, OK, here are the commandments,
but.
You know, now that we've defined them, there
is a danger of someone violating these.
So here's what we'll do.
We'll put some additional laws in front of
them and behind them so that.
You'd have to break these additional laws before
you could ever get to the actual law
of God.
So their their intentions were good.
They were motivated by a desire to see
God's law honored and kept, so they put.
What would become termed as a hedge around
the law, a protective hedge around it, but
in a process of time, they lost the
distinction between the law itself and the hedge.
They began to think that the hedge was
the law.
They began to think that their.
Interpretations of the law were.
As authoritative as the written law itself, and
they began to put these burdens upon people
and then condemn them over their failure to
live up to these additional commandments that were
placed there.
They became so absorbed in this legalism.
That they would just go about simply just
condemning everyone that wasn't part of their little
group.
And guess what they ended up doing.
When God came to visit.
Them.
They condemned him.
Because he didn't keep the law according to
their interpretation of it.
He allows his disciples to eat bread with
unwashed hands.
He heals on the Sabbath day and over
and over again.
You remember, as you read the Gospels, what
did they do?
They accused Jesus of violating the law.
Jesus never violated the law of God.
He went out of his way to break
their laws.
Because their laws were.
Simply that they were their laws, they were
the doctrines and the commandments of men, but
that is what became the whole mosaic system.
In their view.
Now, you see, similar things have happened in
our day and age.
There are people that have a whole list
of things that in their mind, they they
see a sinful things.
That are not necessarily sinful at all, but
it comes from this adding things on to
we're going to be more holy, we're going
to be the most committed, and so we're
not only going to not violate anything written
in here, we're going to come up with
a new list of things that we're going
to keep.
And if you think you keep them, you're
become arrogant, self-righteous.
Irritant to everybody else, and if you don't
think you keep them, you live in misery
because you're condemned.
And you're certain that in the end you're
going to be damned because after all, you
just can't do this.
And these are the kind of things really
that have driven people away from the church.
You know, there's a group called Fundamentalist Anonymous,
and they are people who have come out
of fundamentalism.
And, you know, they go sit around and
talk about all the horror stories they experienced
while they were in the fundamentalist movement and
so forth.
And and I'm not agreeing that that's a
good group, but, you know, I'm sure they've
got some interesting stories because among the so
-called fundamentalist, this has been a huge problem,
the problem of legalism.
And people have been driven away, but the
sad and tragic thing is they've been driven
away from what they perceive to be the
Christian faith, but that's not what it is.
It's been misrepresented to them, but they think
that this is it.
So now they don't want to have anything
to do with it.
Someone was recently telling me about an experience
they had.
They grew up in a Pentecostal fundamentalist.
Atmosphere and.
The father in the house.
Had signed a covenant with his church.
That he would not go to movies.
That he would not play cards that he
would not participate in dances and a whole
list of things that he would not do.
He signed that covenant because he wanted to
be he wanted to be right with God.
Then he spent the rest of his life.
In a lot of misery and condemnation.
A lot of frustration and a lot of
anger over trying to do what he thought
God wanted him to do, and he brought
all of that, of course, upon his family
as well.
I was attending a funeral and they were
talking about him and talking about the fact
that he signed that covenant.
And he promised to enforce it and his
son, who was telling the story, said the
only problem was none of us signed the
covenant.
But we were all bound to it.
And it's interesting, because as I was talking
to one of them.
One of the sons, he told me a
story about how.
He was at school.
This is back in the early 50s.
At school and there, you know, back in
those days and grammar school, I think, or
maybe junior high.
I don't remember.
I think it was sixth grade when I
got into that class where they had square
dancing.
And he told the story about, you know,
being there in the class and they had
the square dancing thing going on.
And I was fine.
And he was just doing it like all
the rest of the kids and enjoying it.
And.
But next week, when it came time for
square dancing and he got up to square
dance, the teacher in front of the whole
class said, oh, no, I'm sorry, you can't
dance today.
And he was puzzled.
He thought, well, why?
What did I do?
I said, well, you know, you you're just
you're not allowed to dance.
And well, how come I'm not allowed to
dance?
Well, actually, your parents sent us a note
and they said it's against your religion.
And therefore, you have to sit down.
And, you know, for a 10 or 11
year old kid.
That was a.
That was hard.
And, you know, all of the.
Mockery and everything that would have gone on
to get your religion, you can't dance and
all of that sort of stuff.
And it had an impact, a negative impact,
and.
You know, you look at those kinds of
things and you just think how unfortunate it
is that.
Those teachers, those pastors, those those leaders, they
did not fulfill.
Paul's admonition here.
They were not good ministers of Jesus Christ
because they did not instruct them in the
right things, they instructed them in the wrong
things.
And brought a lot of unnecessary frustration and
misery and guilt and condemnation and all that
upon people.
I love the grace of God.
It is such a wonderful thing.
To be saved by grace and to know
that God is good and to know that
he came to set us free.
And, you know, that just makes that sets
Christianity in that in that category all by
itself.
There's nothing else like it.
That's not the fruit of any other religion,
joy, peace, liberty.
That is to be the fruit of the
Christian message.
And if as a Christian, I'm all tied
up in knots, if I'm all bound up
in rules and regulations, do not touch, do
not taste, do not handle all of that
kind of stuff, then I haven't been properly
instructed.
Or I haven't paid close enough attention or
I've somehow let some other thing come in
and distort my understanding.
But you see, like I said, if we
just stick with the scriptures, if we just
stick with the word of God and if
we meditate on it.
And if we study it.
And if we have this as our standard
and as our guide, Jesus said it, he
said, if you continue in my word, you
will know the truth and the truth will
do what?
It will set you free.
Yeah.
See, a person who's all who's all bound
up, what do you know about him?
You know that.
But.
They're not abiding in the word.
Because the word, the truth of God sets
you free, we need to be free.
God wants us to be free.
You know, God, God wants us to be
real people.
And there's far too much phoniness in the
church.
It's a battle that's constantly there.
You got to fight against it.
There's too much phoniness.
People aren't real.
A lot of times there's not an authenticity.
Many times there's a.
There's there's a veneer of phoniness.
A hyper spirituality.
You know, when people just run around all
the time, praise the Lord, praise the Lord,
praise the Lord, you know, you know, if
it's genuine, if it's flowing from a heart
that is truly praising the Lord, praise the
Lord.
That's great.
But, you know, sometimes you just look into
anything.
This isn't real.
You ever watch what they call Christian TV,
you know, praise God, bless God.
You know, they just throw these these phrases
around.
And when you listen closely, you listen to
the context.
You realize these people don't even know what
they're saying.
They're not praising God.
They just use these words instead of words
that other people, you know, somebody else might
go, hey, cool.
And they go, bless God.
It just, you know, it means the same
thing is cool.
It doesn't mean bless God.
Really, it's just jargon.
It's just lingo.
And, you know, don't get me wrong.
I mean, those those are wonderful phrases to
use if they're flowing from a heart that's
blessing God and praising God.
But if it's just jargon, if it's just
this is the lingo, then forget it.
It's it leaves a bad taste in the
mouth.
I'll never forget listening to one of the
listening to one of the guys rant and
rave about someone and talk about how he'd
like to see him shot down with a
holy ghost machine gun.
Praise God.
So basically, he's expressing his desire to see
this person murdered and blessing God at the
same time that creates a huge problem.
But, you know, we just we need to
be real people.
And when it's time to bless God and
praise the Lord, then let's do it.
And let's do it from a heart that
is absolutely genuine.
But let's not walk around just mouthing phrases
and being phony.
Because, you know what people see through it,
we need to be we need to be
real in as much as people know that
we fail.
You know, the person who walks around acting
holier than thou, the person who puts themselves
forth as they've never failed.
They've you know, I can I can see
where you stumbled, but not me.
You know, that's that's phony.
It's repulsive as well kind of stuff is
just a turn off and something happens.
You know, it's it happens in churches and
it happens usually the longer things go on.
These things kind of just tend to build
up.
Man, when that when a work is new
and fresh and you don't a lot of
time, you don't really see any of that
stuff.
So it's what I say to the guys
in Europe all the time, you know, they
they will often tell me and not just
in Europe, but in any place, a lot
of times when you go out and you
start a new church and you get people
coming in, a lot of times your most
difficult people are the people that have come
out of churches and the most wonderful people
are the ones that get saved just out
of whatever.
And but going back to Europe, especially in
Europe.
Many of the churches that have gone through
struggles and difficulties and have had problems, it
you trace it back, it's to these people
from churches and traditions that have come in.
And I tell the guys, I say, you
know what?
Don't bother with them.
Just.
Just go out to the.
Highways and the byways.
Make your own converts.
Because then you can bring them in and
they have no excess baggage, they have no
church baggage, they don't have any junk that
they're going to.
Stuff they're going to bring in and clutter
up the ministry.
Some of the biggest problems have been with
people from church backgrounds with heavy legalism, so
this is what we want to be established
in.
We want to be established in the goodness
of God, the grace of God, and when
we are, we're going to be experiencing that
wonderful freedom.
That great liberty, and you know, when we
are at that place.
I'll tell you what, people are attracted to
that.
Remember, the people, they were repulsed by the
Pharisees, they were absolutely repulsed by them, they
sensed the contempt coming from them, they sensed
the disdain.
Jesus comes along.
And what's the story there?
Man, the multitudes were flocking to him.
Now, Jesus was truly holy, he was truly
righteous.
In all of his holiness and all of
his righteousness, they sensed an acceptance from him,
a welcome from him.
Because his holiness and his righteousness, of course,
were there blended together with his love, and
so where they were, they were repulsed by
the self-righteous religious elite of the day,
they were, they were drawn into Jesus, they
were attracted to him.
You see, we want to be like Jesus.
We don't want to be like those other
guys.
We don't want to get caught up in
that stuff, because it'll just hinder what God
wants to do in and through our lives.
You know, I really believe that in these
days, we have to be careful as Christians.
We have to really be wise.
You know, today there is a great need
for wisdom.
It really is, I think, more so than
maybe there has been in the past.
You see, in the past, because there was.
To quite an extent, sort of a Christian
veneer upon the culture, you could conduct yourself
in a certain way, and it didn't it
didn't change things that much one way or
the other, because there was a general mindset
and attitude among the culture that was somewhat
favorable toward Christianity, at least in the ethical
sense and the moral sense.
But as you know, that's that's quickly vanishing.
And we are living in a culture that
is no longer a Christianized culture for the
most part.
And what we know as truth and what
we believe morally and so forth at one
time was sort of taken for granted.
It's no longer taken for granted in the
culture.
So we have to be, I think, more
wise in these days to navigate these days,
because in the midst of this, the Lord
wants to use us.
We don't have that.
Sort of that that prop that earlier generations
might have had.
To refer back to tradition or to refer
back to what everybody knew was right or
it's different now.
And so we need great wisdom from God
and how to be.
The salt and the light and how to
communicate to people in these days, and we
have to be careful not to just.
Assume that everybody thinks or feels or believes,
just like we do, because, of course, everybody
knows that these things are right and everything
else is wrong.
That all might be true.
But.
We need to have wisdom in how we
navigate that, you know, again.
Just a quick reference to Europe, you know,
being there this past week.
You know, you read the papers, you know,
the the general mindset.
Among some is a mindset that's negative toward
the United States, toward American foreign policy and
things of that nature.
And for me personally, I have my political
opinions and views and all of that sort
of thing.
But, you know, I find that when I'm
there and I'm traveling there and I'm meeting
people, the last thing I want to do
is get in any kind of debate with
them about U.S. foreign policy or politics
or, you know, I don't want to go
there.
I want to go right to the real
issue.
I want to go right to Jesus Christ.
You know, because at the end of the
day, it doesn't matter what, you know, political
party you belong to or whether you believe
in capitalism or socialism or, you know, whether
you think the war is right or wrong
or, you know, all of that stuff can
be things that can polarize you.
It can be things that can, you know,
really prevent you from being able to be
a witness, perhaps.
So we have to stick to the important
thing.
And that's keeping our focus on Christ and
the cross.
In the conference that I attended last week
in one of the sessions, we had a
question and answer time, and one of the
guys asked a question about.
Well, I had to do with Israel and
to do with the Jewish state and had,
you know, all of that, you know, what
should our perspective be and, you know, how
can we here in Europe show more support
for the state of Israel and all of
this?
You know, these were the questions that were
asked and.
And they were asked to me and I
said, well, I'm going to answer your question,
but it might not be the standard answer
that you would expect.
And I said, you know, from a political
standpoint or from just a historical standpoint or
whatever, I I believe that Israel fought for
the land they want it fair and square
and they have a right to it.
But I said, you know, I don't want
to jump in the middle of that situation
because.
I'm I'm not called to support a political
entity anywhere in the world.
I'm called to be an ambassador of the
kingdom of God and to preach Jesus Christ.
And the last thing I want to do
is put a stumbling block or a roadblock
between myself and the person that I want
to get the gospel to by taking a
political position.
And, you know, as I was saying this,
another friend of mine was there and I
had never had the discussion with him about
this.
And I was kind of wondering in my
mind, I wonder what he's thinking about what
I'm saying.
I went because he's very he's been historically
he's been very, very much a supporter of
Israel.
And so finally, at one point, I just
I just shouted across the room and I
said.
I said, what do you think?
And he said, you know what, I absolutely
agree with you.
He said, I think sometimes we've gone over
the top in our sort of blind support
for Israel.
And he said, the Lord has spoken to
me about it, and he said, you know
how God turned me around on it?
And I said, no, he said he sent
me into the West Bank to minister to
the Palestinians.
And he said it really brought things into
perspective that these are people to their people
for whom Christ died and were to preach
Christ and him crucified, not a political entity
or anything like that.
And so we want to be established in
the goodness of God, the grace of God,
the liberty that's in Christ Jesus, the cross.
Those are the things.
And, you know, when when that's the reality
in our lives, you know, a life that's.
That's being lived enjoyably.
Is a life that is going to strike
curiosity in other people.
And that's, I think, what God wants to
do.
He wants us to understand his grace to
the extent that, man, we are just digging
life.
We are having a great time here because
we know Jesus and this will be the
thing.
And, you know, sometimes that that translates into.
You know, a lot of times holding your
peace, not saying something you you don't agree
with somebody's position or something like that.
But instead of just automatically condemning or jumping
in or judging, you withhold that you just
hold back, say, you know, Lord, I just
wait and see, see what happens here.
And you'll be amazed.
And I've done both things.
I've jumped the gun.
Somebody says something and you're right, oh, that's
wrong.
What do you mean?
That's stupid.
You think that what are you?
Where's your brain, man?
And, you know, you might be right, but
you just lost an opportunity.
And I found that.
More and more, the Lord will have me
in conversations with people and in situations, and
there's a lot of weird stuff going on,
and I'm just, you know, I'm just quiet
and just sort of and in my heart,
I'm saying, Lord, I don't know what to
do here.
So just give me wisdom, just show me
when to say something and what I ought
to say at this point.
And God's faithful, he will do it.
So in closing, these are the things that
we want to be taken up with.
Godliness is profitable in all things.
And like I said earlier, I want to
leave you with this.
It's not a matter of denying the flesh,
but rather it's a matter of building up
the spirit.
Just build up the spirit.
Seek the Lord, be in the word, not
again out of a legalistic, I've got to
do this.
You know, John has a great little.
Saying it's not a got to, it's a
get to like that, because that's what it
is, I get to be in the world,
got to be in it, I get to
be, it's a privilege.
And as I'm just in the word of
God and I'm in fellowship with my brothers
and sisters and I'm in communion with God
in prayer and I'm just going about life,
you know what's happening?
The flesh is just it's not even a
factor.
It's it's being controlled by the spirit of
God.
That's what we do.
Rather than trying to drive out the darkness,
you just turn on the light.
And the Lord will take care of the
rest of it.
These are the things that Paul said to
Timothy, instruct the brethren in them and you
will be a good minister of Jesus Christ.
Let's pray, Lord, we thank you that you.
Lord, that you're the wonderful God that you
are.
Lord, that you're full of grace.
Oh, Jesus, just think of that statement in
John's gospel that the law came through Moses,
but grace and truth came through you, Jesus
Christ.
Lord, thank you for your grace, for your
goodness.
Thank you, Lord, that you came to set
us free, not to bind us up in
religion.
And Lord.
May we be free indeed.
Free, just loving you and loving each other,
being real people, genuine, authentic, sincere, without hypocrisy.
Without putting on.
A religious front.
Help us just to be real people who
love you, we pray in your name, amen.