Labels

Wednesday, February 22, 2023

Spiritual Blindness - A Thorough Understanding of Error – Purity 973


Spiritual Blindness -  A Thorough Understanding of Error – Purity 973                         

Purity 973 02/22/2023 Purity 973 Podcast

Purity 973 on YouTube: 



Good morning,

Today’s photo of the sun shining over the Atlantic Ocean from the point of view of the Springmaid Pier in Myrtle Beach SC comes to us from yours truly as this New Yorker was delighted to be experiencing 80 degrees and sunshine and had to capture the moment as my wife and I checked out the immediate surroundings of what will be our home away from home for three nights. 

Well it’s Wednesday, and even though we just got here yesterday, we will have already reached the midway point of our stay by day’s end and so I would remind each one of us to appreciate today for what it is because no matter where this last “hump day” of February finds you physically, emotionally, or spiritually, time will keep on marching forward. So we should appreciate where we are and try to find peace now, joy now with a sense of gratitude and contentment.

No, my vacation will not last forever but I get to enjoy it today. And as hard as it may believe, for those of you working, some day your job and career will come to an end, even if it means your life should expire before you retire!  So whether you are working or not, realize that the joy we have in life is greatly affected by our perspective or our world view.  

Last night after surveying the lay of the land near our resort, I lead the participants of  the Freedom in Christ course that I facilitate on Zoom to consider the “world’s view of the truth” and how it presents false equations of how we can feel accepted, significant, and secure.  The lesson demonstrated this with the following equations:

·       Performance + Accomplishments = Significance

·       Status + Recognition =  Security

·       Appearance + Admiration = Acceptance

These equations can seem to make sense and cause us to try to earn our significance, security, and acceptance in the world but the truth is revealed when those equations don’t add up.  The biographies of over achievers and the best and brightest among us often reveal that even the ultra rich and successful can be thoroughly dissatisfied with their lives even after they accomplished all their goals, were admired by the masses, or had all the financial resources to keep them in the lap of luxury for the rest of their lives. 

The reason why these equations don’t add up is because they don’t seek to answer the big questions of life and death and their ultimate purpose and meaning according to the Creator of Life, God.  

This weeks lesson also looked at the different world views in regards of science, spirituality, and relativism by examining the western, non-western, and post-modern world views and how they present a false picture of reality.  According the lesson:

The Western view generally bases their view of reality based on what can be determined by science (what’s observable) and it tends to all but deny the spiritual or supernatural possibilities of life. 

The Non-Western worldview – on the other hand while it may believe in science and what’s observable, not only believes in “spirits” or the supernatural aspects of life but believes that those forces should be respected and can be manipulated for good or bad.   

The Post modern world view tends to be relativistic because it tends to define its “own truth” based on personal experience.   

All of these views offer up an explanation of reality that would deny the truth of God’s word and the Biblical worldview.  The rules of science, the practices of animistic or pantheistic religions that seek to manipulate the “spirits”, and “doing whatever is right in our own eyes”  would not lead one to the conclusion that eternal life is secured through faith in Jesus Christ.  The truth of God’s word, in the Bible, is the only source of truth that would lead one to the ultimate acceptance, security, and significance that we all were made to experience.  God’s equation for obtaining acceptance, significance, and security is for us to receive them from Him, the creator of all things and the author of life and truth, through the way He established – through faith in Jesus Christ.    

As Christians, we understand this and we are increasingly experiencing the reality of it as we grow in our faith.  Our deepest desire is to help other people to “see the truth” too!

In our discussion, we addressed the fact that our modern society has muddied the waters of “seeing the light” because it presents the view that “all roads lead to heaven” and that one view of reality is as good as any other.  But as nice as the idea of ‘coexistence” can be, the fact that all the different religions and world philosophies about life present alternate explanations for “the way things work” indicates that they can’t all be true.  

One of the men who works with youth as a counselor was particularly concerned about how several of the youth has counseled seem to have a well grounded understanding of the various religions and philosophies out there but seemed to be completely oblivious to the possibility of the objective reality that there really is a God that they could have a relationship with or to consider that they will be accountable with what they do with their lives to Him.  

This man’s description of his counselees indicated that everything is just a theory to them., that they seem to have a such thorough understanding of all the possible explanations of reality out there but it doesn’t seem that they have considered that only one view could be true, and that they would thus be subject to that truth.  On the contrary, their lack of concern of being “right with God”, would indicate that they are incapable of believing that any of the possibilities are “real”. They can tell you what the various religions believe but they couldn’t tell you whether or not what they taught was true. Their thorough understanding seemed to stop shy of evaluating the truth claims of each possibility to determine what was true.   They essentially have a thorough understanding of error and thus are all the more spiritually blinded to the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ.  

Their “open minds” would in effect keep them closed off from salvation because they have made the personal decision that there is no absolute truth, that somehow the contradictions and inconsistencies of the belief that all points of view are equally valid when it comes to ultimate reality didn’t penetrate through the accumulation of understanding the different views of life.  

This all of course reveals the reality of the spiritual forces of darkness, the powers and principalities, that would raise up any other possibility except Jesus to lead the people of this world to destruction. 

2 Corinthians 10:4-5 (NKJV)
4  For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds,
5  casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ,

While only the Holy Spirit can reveal the truth of the gospel to anyone to bring them to salvation, our part is to lovingly stand in the gap and to point out the inconsistencies of the world’s various views of reality and lead people to consider the truth of God’s word and to apply it to their lives personally.   We are to cast down the arguments the world makes by telling the truth of Jesus Christ and imploring them to make a personal decision to apply it to their lives by making Jesus the Lord of their lives.   

There are various theories of how to do evangelism of course but the emphasis should always be to present Christ as God’s answer for life and how we individually must examine this thing called life and choose what we will believe, not in theory, but in practice because it will be what we do with what we have learned that will be what determines the quality and future of our lives.   

So keep walking and talking with God and be ready to give an explanation for the hop you have in Christ because when you can tell someone why you believe and what your faith in Christ has done in your life, you may be used by the Lord to open the eyes of the blind and to set the captives free.

---------------------------------------------------------

Today’s Bible verse comes to us from “The NLT Bible Promise Book for Men”.

This morning’s meditation verses are:

Philippians 4:8-9 (NLT2)
8  And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.
9  Keep putting into practice all you learned and received from me—everything you heard from me and saw me doing. Then the God of peace will be with you.

Today’s Bible verses remind us how to think as Christians and calls us to be “real” in our faith to receive the fruit of the Spirit of peace.   

The Apostle Paul presents us with the means of having peace. We are to think on things that are true, honorable, right, pure, and lovely, admirable excellent, and worthy of praise, the things of God as revealed in the Bible,  and to put everything we learn from it into practice.  TO have peace, we need to believe and practice what the Lord teaches us.  

That’s what being a disciple of Jesus and finding peace is all about. So think about those things and do those things that the Lord would have you do and share the recipe of peace that comes through faith in Jesus Christ to the world that desperately needs 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 A.W. Pink’s “The Sovereignty of God.”

As always, I share this information for educational purposes and encourage all to purchase A.W. Pink’s books for your own private study and to support his work.  This resource is available on many websites for less than $20.00.

THE SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD

By  ARTHUR W. PINK

CHAPTER SEVEN

GOD’S SOVEREIGNTY AND THE HUMAN WILL

2. The Bondage of the Human Will

In any treatise that proposes to deal with the human will, its nature and functions, respect should be had to the will in three different men, namely, unfallen Adam, the sinner, and the Lord Jesus Christ. In unfallen Adam the will was free, free in both directions, free toward good and free toward evil. Adam was created in a state of innocency but not in a state of holiness, as is so often assumed and asserted. Adam’s will was therefore in a condition of moral equipoise: that is to say, in Adam there was no constraining bias in him toward good or evil, and as such Adam differed radically from all his descendants, as well as from “the Man Christ Jesus.” But with the sinner it is far otherwise. The sinner is born with a will that is not in a condition of moral equipoise, because in him there is a heart that is “deceitful above all things and desperately wicked,” and this gives him a bias toward evil. So, too, with the Lord Jesus it was far otherwise: He also differed radically from unfallen Adam. The Lord Jesus Christ could not sin because He was “the Holy One of God.” Before He was born into this world it was said to Mary, “The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that Holy Thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God” (Luke 1:35). Speaking reverently then we say, that the will of the Son of Man was not in a condition of moral equipoise, that is, capable of turning toward either good or evil. The will of the Lord Jesus was biased toward that which is good because, side by side with His sinless, holy, perfect humanity, was His eternal Deity. Now in contradistinction from the will of the Lord Jesus which was biased toward good, and Adam’s will which, before his fall, was in a condition of moral equipoise—capable of turning toward either good or evil—the sinner’s will is biased toward evil, and therefore is free in one direction only, namely, in the direction of evil. The sinner’s will is enslaved because it is in bondage to and is the servant of a depraved heart.

In what does the sinner’s freedom consist? This question is naturally suggested by what we have just said above. The sinner is ‘free’ in the sense of being unforced from without. God never forces the sinner to sin. But the sinner is not free to do either good or evil because an evil heart within is ever inclining him toward sin. Let us illustrate what we have in mind. I hold in my hand a book. I release it; what happens? It falls. In which direction? Downwards; always downwards. Why? Because, answering the law of gravity, its own weight sinks it. Suppose I desire that book to occupy a position three feet higher; then what? I must lift it; a power outside of that book must raise it. Such is the relationship which fallen man sustains toward God. Whilst Divine power upholds him he is preserved from plunging still deeper into sin; let that power be withdrawn and he falls—his own weight (of sin) drags him down. God does not push him down anymore than I did that book. Let all Divine restraint be removed and every man is capable of becoming, would become, a Cain, a Pharaoh, a Judas. How then is the sinner to move heavenward? By an act of his own will? Not so. A power outside of himself must grasp hold of him and lift him every inch of the way. The sinner is free, but free in one direction only—free to fall, free to sin. As the Word expresses it: “For when ye were the servants of sin, ye were free from righteousness” (Rom. 6:20). The sinner is free to do as he pleases, always as he pleases (except as he is restrained by God), but his pleasure is to sin.

In the opening paragraph of this chapter we insisted that a proper conception of the nature and function of the will is of practical importance, nay, that it constitutes a fundamental test of theological orthodoxy or doctrinal soundness. We wish to amplify this statement and attempt to demonstrate its accuracy. The freedom or bondage of the will was the dividing line between Augustinianism and Pelagianism, and in more recent times between Calvinism and Arminianism. Reduced to simple terms this means that the difference involved was the affirmation or denial of the total depravity of man. In taking the affirmative we shall now consider,[1]

 

---------------------------more tomorrow------------------------

Join our “Victory over the Darkness”, “The Bondage Breaker”, "Freedom in Christ" series of Discipleship Classes via the mt4christ247 podcast!

at https://mt4christ247.podbean.com, You can also find it on Apple podcasts

(https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-mt4christ247s-podcast/id1551615154). The mt4christ247 podcast is also available on Google Podcasts, Amazon Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartradio, and Audible.com. 

These teachings are also available on the MT4Christ247 You Tube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@MT4Christ247

Email me at mt4christ247@gmail.com to receive the class materials, share your progress, and to be encouraged.

My wife, TammyLyn, also offers Christian encouragement via her Ask Seek Knock blog (https://tammylynask.blogspot.com/ ),  her Facebook Group: Ask, Seek, Knock (https://www.facebook.com/groups/529047851449098 ) and her podcast Ask, Seek, and Knock on Podbean (https://feed.podbean.com/tammalyn78/feed.xml)

“The views, opinions, and commentary of this publication are those of the author, M.T. Clark, only, and do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of any of the photographers, artists, ministries, or other authors of the other works that may be included in this publication, and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any entities the author may represent.”

Encouragement for the Path of Christian Discipleship

 



[1] Arthur W. Pink, The Sovereignty of God (Swengel, PA: Bible Truth Depot, 1949), 143–144.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.