The Lie of “Being Different” - Purity 713
Purity 713 04/23/2022 Purity 713 Podcast
Good morning,
Today’s photo of a wild, and as of yet unidentified, flowering
member of the plant kingdom, surrounded by desert sand and cacti, underneath
clear blue skies comes to us from a friend who captured this unruly botanical
beast while visiting Phoenix Arizona at the Desert Botanical Garden. I chose today’s photo because it highlights something
that is “different” from it’s surroundings.
Well it’s Saturday and I pray that all my friends use this day
to enjoy the life God has provided you with and to relax. Of course if you are
like me, you may have a job that calls you to work on the weekends from time to
time and although it is Saturday today, because I have to work it is a “different”
type of Saturday.
Some say that variety is the spice of life and that the richness
of diversity that we can experience in life is to be celebrated and enjoyed. I would
agree with those sentiments but I had a discussion yesterday with someone which
caused me to think about how the enemy can use our “uniqueness” and individual
differences to divide and conquer us.
In theological or philosophical discussions, I often hear the
challenge that there is no “normal” and that life is determined by our
individual interpretations and that moral judgements are all relative and are
based on whatever we decide is right and wrong and is thus subject to
change.
Our society not only questions authority, we tend to echo Pontius
Pilate’s question in
John 18:38 (NLT2) when he asked:
38 “What is truth?”
Ironically Pilate was speaking to the walking embodiment of
Truth in the person of Jesus Christ at the time and was must have momentarily been
influenced by His presence as Pilate’s next statement to the people of Jerusalem
was true, when He said of Jesus: “He is not guilty of any crime.”
But just Pilate knew the truth, didn’t mean that his
behavior or his life would be permanently impacted by His exposure to it as he
chose to surrender what he knew to be an innocent man to death on a cross,
because it “worked”. It was pragmatic. It made the masses happy. Allowing an innocent
man go to his death, “worked for Pilate”.
There is some difference of opinion on what happened to
Pilate after He allowed Christ to be crucified. Some Christian traditions claim
that Pilate converted to Christianity and he is recognized as a martyr and
saint. However, other resources online
state emphatically that there is no credible historical evidence supports that “story”.
So did Pilate come to faith in Christ? Only God knows for
sure and the truth is already known in heaven and will be revealed to those of
us who put our faith in Christ and enter into His eternal kingdom.
Anyway, my disposition on “being different” wasn’t supposed
to be about Pilate. It was supposed to be about us. Even though Pilate lived a different life from
us, his question still applies to us: What is truth?
I recall that the Bible tells us two things about truth
that establishes truth and thus what is to be considered “normal”. The word says:
John 17:17 (NKJV) says
17 Sanctify
them by Your truth. Your word is truth. – The Word of God is truth.
And
John 14:6
(NKJV)
6
Jesus
said to him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the
Father except through Me. - Jesus is the truth and the only way to God
the Father.
This is truth, the word of God and Jesus as Lord and Savior. God’s Word establishes the “normal standard” by which we are to live our lives. Anything we choose to believe or do that doesn’t agree with the wisdom of God’s word is “missing the mark” of that good standard and should be repented of and replaced by thoughts and actions that are consistent with its wisdom.
However, the cats is out of the bag so to speak. It’s too late to be made righteous by our behavior. No matter who you are, you have already “missed the mark”, you have already sinned. Thus Christ came to pay for your sins and it is only through faith in Him that we can receive forgiveness and eternal life.
But that new life in Christ, still call us to live a “normal” Christian life by turning from the ways of the world that “work for me” and instead renew our minds with God’s word and enter into the abundant life of obedience to God’s wisdom that manifests in peace, love, joy, goodness, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness, patience and self-control.
There is no peace without God.
But unfortunately, the enemy comes in and convinces some of us that we are “different” or that we are “weird” and we are incapable of living a Christian lifestyle and so the gospel of Jesus Christ doesn’t apply to us. Our being “different” causes us to deny God, corrupt the gospel for our own purposes, or to choose a different philosophy of life or religion that “works for me.”
But Pilate’s question has been answered. Christ, the living word of God, is the truth and unless we come to faith in Jesus and abide with Him, it won’t matter how “different” we were in life because we will all be the same when our lives end and we are judged by the Truth.
There is no “different”. All men and women are made in the image of God by God and when our lives on earth end or when Christ returns we will be judged by our Creator.
All live on earth. All suffer. All sin. And All will die or will face Christ when returns.
But not all will be forgiven. Not all will live with God forever.
As much as today’s pictured plant is different from the cacti around it, it will one day similarly die and turn to dust, proving that ultimately it was no different then the other plants around it.
Although I declare today as a different Saturday, because I have to work, it is like all other Saturdays in that it will have 24 hours in it and work schedule or not, I am free to do with it what I choose. In this sense, it is no different from other Saturdays or any other day.
So no matter what your sin is, what your current situation is, or what your personal characteristics and preferences are, all men and women are called to seek the Truth, find it and apply it to our lives.
We move about our days choosing what we will and creating a life that “works for us” but make no mistake there is a “normal” and holy standard that the Creator has established and reveal to us in His word and there is a single pathway, a narrow road, through faith in Jesus Christ, that leads to forgiveness and eternal life.
So keep walking and talking with God, when you do that you will realize that He loves you and that you are not so different that you can’t receive His love and the life that He has for you. Not matter how “uniquely different” we may feel we are, He calls each one of us to choose His Way and live.
_____________________________________________________________
Today’s Bible verse comes to us from “The NLT Bible Promise Book
for Men”.
This
morning’s meditation verse is:
John 16:13 (NLT2)
13 When
the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak
on his own but will tell you what he has heard. He will tell you about the
future.
Today’s Bible verse speaks about the Holy Spirit and how he will guide
us by showing us the truth and revealing to us what will come in the future.
If you know Christ as your Lord and Savior, the Holy Spirit has guided
you into that truth. The Holy Spirit seeks
to cause us to glorify Jesus Christ and to do the Father’s Will on earth. So as we walk out our life in the Spirit, we
should understand that any “leadings” or intuitions that we receive that prompt
us to action should be evaluated first.
Will what we are being prompted to do result in something that will
give God glory?
Does it agree with what God’s word says?
If the “leadings or intuitions” we receive would drive us to do
something selfishly or would be against the principles for living detailed in
God’s word, we are being deceived by the flesh, the enemy, or worldly influence.
The Holy Spirit will lead us into all truth, not sin, pride, or confusion.
The Holy Spirit promotes the truth of
the gospel of Jesus Christ and God’s will for our lives, which is our
sanctification. The language of the Holy Spirit is the word of God. He wouldn’t
cause us to pursue things that are contrary to it. That’s what today’s verse means where it says:
“He will not speak on his own but will tell you what he
has heard.” He has heard the word of God and passes that along to guide
us.
As for the future? When you walk in the Spirit,
the Holy Spirit will guide you. 1 Corthians, 12:8 says that the Holy Spirit may give you a
word of knowledge or a word of wisdom. And I can testify that at various times
in my walk I have received the Holy Spirit’s guidance at times and He gave me
promptings that were based on a things I didn’t know but I was given assurances
that it was true and in every instance those leadings proved to be good as I
myself or others were blessed through them.
So if we stay in the Lord’s presence our moment to moment futures can benefit
from His wisdom.
As for our ultimate futures, the word of God provides
prophecies of Christ’s return and the promise of a heavenly place to go to
beyond this life that is provided and prepared for us before hand by God.
The Holy Spirit indwells us to guide us and to
assure us that we are children of God. He lead us into all truth and gives us a
life filled with His fruit when we follow His lead. So read the word of God to become fluent in
His language and so you will know His voice when you hear it.
As always, I
invite all to go to mt4christ.org where I always share insights from prominent
Christian theologians and counselors to assist my brothers and sisters in
Christ with their walk.
Today we continue
sharing from John Piper’s “Don’t Waste Your Life” .
As
always, I share this information for educational purposes and encourage all to
purchase John Pipers’ books for your own private study and to
support his work. This resource is available on many websites for
less than $5.00.
Christ Bought Every
Good Thing and Every Bad Thing That Turned for Good
Why is this the case?
Because for redeemed sinners, every good thing—indeed every bad thing that God
turns for good—was obtained for us by the cross of Christ. Apart from the death
of Christ, sinners get nothing but judgment. Apart from the cross of Christ,
there is only condemnation. Therefore everything that you enjoy in Christ—as a
Christian, as a person who trusts Christ—is owing to the death of Christ. And
all your rejoicing in all things should therefore be a rejoicing in the cross
where all your blessings were purchased for you at the cost of the death of the
Son of God, Jesus Christ.
One
of the reasons we are not as Christ-centered and cross-saturated as we should
be is that we have not realized that everything—everything good, and everything
bad that God turns for the good of his redeemed children—was purchased by the
death of Christ for us. We simply take life and breath and health and friends
and everything for granted. We think it is ours by right. But the fact is that
it is not ours by right. We are doubly undeserving of it.
1)
We are creatures, and our Creator is
not bound or obligated to give us anything—not life or health or anything. He
gives, he takes, and he does us no injustice (Job 1:21).
2)
And besides being creatures with no claim on our Creator, we are sinners. We have fallen short of his
glory (Romans 3:23). We have ignored him and disobeyed him and failed to love
him and trust him. The wrath of his justice is kindled against us. All we
deserve from him is judgment (Romans 3:19). Therefore every breath we take,
every time our heart beats, every day that the sun rises, every moment we see
with our eyes or hear with our ears or speak with our mouths or walk with our
legs is, for now, a free and undeserved gift to sinners who deserve only
judgment.
Welcomed Mercy or Mounting Wrath?
I say “for now” because if
you refuse to see God in his gifts, they will turn out not to be gifts but High
Court evidence of ingratitude. The Bible speaks of them first as “the riches of
his kindness and forbearance and patience” that point us to repentance (Romans
2:4). But when we presume upon them and do not cherish God’s grace in them,
“Because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for
yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed”
(Romans 2:5).
But
for those who see the merciful hand of God in every breath they take and give
credit where it is due, Jesus Christ will be seen and savored as the great
Purchaser of every undeserved breath. Every heartbeat will be received as a
gift from his hand.
Deserving Nothing but Inheriting Everything—Why?
How then did he purchase
them? Answer: by his blood. If I deserve nothing but condemnation because of my
sin, but instead get life and breath in this age, and everlasting joy in the
age to come, because Christ died for me, then everything good—and everything
bad that God turns for good—must be the reward of his suffering (not my merit).
This includes all that diversity that I wondered about at the beginning of this
chapter. I asked, can work and leisure and relationships and eating and
lovemaking and ministry all really flow from a single passion? Is there
something deep enough and big enough and strong enough to hold all that together?
Can sex and cars and work and war and changing diapers and doing taxes really
have a God-exalting, soul-satisfying unity? Now we see that every experience in
life is designed to magnify the cross of Christ. Or to say it another way,
every good thing in life (or bad thing graciously turned for good) is meant to
magnify Christ and him crucified.
Did Christ Buy My Totaled Dodge?
So, for example, we
totaled our old Dodge Spirit a few years ago, but nobody was hurt. And in that
safety I exult. I glory in that. But why was nobody hurt? That was a gift to me
and my family that none of us deserves. And it won’t always be that way. But
this time it was, and we didn’t deserve it. We are sinners and by nature
children of wrath, apart from Christ. So how did we come to have such a gift
for our good? Answer: Christ died for our sins on the cross and took away the
wrath of God from us and secured for us, even though we don’t deserve it, God’s
omnipotent grace that works everything together for our good. So when I exult in
our safety, I am exulting in the cross of Christ.
Then
the insurance paid us for the car, and my wife Noël took that money and went to
Iowa and bought a Chevy Lumina that was one year newer and drove it home in the
snow. And I exult in the amazing grace of so much bounty. Just like that. You
wreck your car. You come out unhurt. Insurance pays up. You get another one.
And you move on almost as if nothing had happened. And in thanks I bow my head
and exult in the untold mercies even of these little material things. Where do
all these mercies come from? If you are a saved sinner, a believer in Jesus,
they come through the cross. Apart from the cross, there is only
judgment—patience and mercy for a season, but then, if spurned, all that mercy
only serves to intensify judgment. Therefore every good thing in life, and
every bad thing that God turns for good, is a blood-bought gift. And all
boasting—all exultation—should be boasting in the cross.
Woe
to me if I exult in any blessing of any kind at any time, unless my exulting is
an exulting in the cross of Christ.
Another
way to say this is that the design of the cross is the glory of Christ. The aim
of God in the cross is that Christ would be honored. When Paul says in
Galatians 6:14, “Far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord
Jesus Christ,” he is saying that God’s will is that the cross always be
magnified—that Christ crucified always be our boast and exultation and joy and
praise—that Christ get glory and thanks and honor for every good thing in our
lives and every bad thing that God turns for good.[1]
---------------------------more
tomorrow------------------------
Join
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Encouragement for the Path of Christian Discipleship
[1]
John Piper, Don’t Waste Your
Life (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2003), 51–54.
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