Are You Wise in This Worldly Age? – Self-Deception Series 20 – Purity 1109

Purity 1109 08/01/2023 Purity 1109 Podcast

Purity 1109 on YouTube: 

Good morning,

Today’s mildly enhanced photo a blue, cloud filled
skies, green rows of vineyard grapes, and a roadside sign proclaiming the State
of Pennsylvania’s wish of welcome and it’s encouragement to “pursue your
happiness” comes to us from yours truly as I hurriedly captured this scene
while crossing the border into the Keystone State yesterday as my wife TammyLyn
drove a large portion of our blended family towards our final destination in
Erie Pennsylvania on the first day of our 5 night vacation exploring Lake
Erie. 

Well, It’s Tuesday and I apologize for doctoring today’s
photo, but the weather was a little “blah” yesterday, I was a little lax in photo
documenting our trip out west, and I wanted to share something positive that
would highlight the beauty of God’s creation from our journey.  The truth is that the rows and rows and grapes
that we encountered upon entering Pennsylvania was somewhat impressive, but the
lighting didn’t do it justice, so I used my phone to brighten it up a bit. 

And this is something that we do when we are walking
in the Spirit, we try to brighten things up a bit by encouraging a focus on the
truth of who we are in Christ and by focusing on the beauty of God’s creation
and what He has done and is doing in our lives.   Things won’t always be shiny and bright as
we walk through this world, but when we focus on the Lord, His Truth, and our
relationship with Him we can find something better than “your happiness” (how’s
that for subjective?) that is based on our meeting all the right circumstantial
conditions and preferences that “our happiness” requires. Better than the
fleeting good vibes of “your happiness”, when we walk in the Spirit we can experience
abiding peace, love, and joy that even overcast “blah” days can’t take away. 

But we must also endeavor to have a balanced walk of
faith that doesn’t deny reality.  Telling
others, or yourself, everything is “fine and dandy” when you are struggling or
hurting is an extreme that we don’t want to go to. While we will stand on the
truths of God’s word to encourage us, we don’t want to gloss over the painful
facts of life that need more than  “putting
on a happy face” to process and resolve. 
Life can be problematic and sometimes those problems need more than a
smile and a positive attitude to overcome. Sometimes they require repentance,
endurance, perseverance, and waiting on God. 
So let’s be honest when we assess our situations and our abilities  to be able to really “walk in Truth”. 

 And that
brings us to our current series on Self- Deception, where we have decided to investigate
some of the ways we deceive ourselves by walking through Step 2, Deception Vs.
Truth, of the Steps to Freedom in Christ to see what ways we may have been deceived
by “the world” and ourselves and in what ways we have wrongly defended
ourselves. 

So we present the fourth of the  “Ways to Deceive Yourself”:

4. Thinking I am wise in this worldly age.

The scripture reference for this point is:

1 Corinthians 3:18-19 (NKJV)
¹⁸  Let no one deceive
himself. If anyone among you seems to be wise in this age, let him become a
fool that he may become wise.
¹⁹  For the wisdom of this
world is foolishness with God. For it is written, “He catches the wise
in their own craftiness”.

While we should never walk in false humility or refuse
to acknowledge our positive attributes and talents, when we think we are wise
in this worldly age we may want to ask ourselves to look at ourselves honestly
and to perhaps challenge ourselves with evidence for our wisdom or to consider
the sources of our vast reserves of knowledge.

The supporting verse for this item on self-deception
warns us that if we think we are wise we should think again because even though
we may have learned much, we may have too high of an opinion of “our wisdom”.  

There are lots of pitfalls on the “path of wisdom” to
fall into here.  

The first is that because we have learned things about
our world, science, or the ways of men we may think that we have it all figured
out.  The “best and the brightest” among
us prove they “know something” because they have used their powers of
observations and knowledge to forge a path to progress and prosperity. They
have seen patterns and manipulated circumstances to their benefit and because
they have gained much many would consider them to be “wise”. 

However, as much as these movers and shakers may seem
to have it all figured out, the word of God indicates that the wisdom of this
world is foolishness with God.  Although
these “self-made” men seem to have accomplished complete self-sufficiency
through their shrewd discernments of the ways of the world, in reality they are
completely at the mercy of One who is much wiser and far more powerful than they.  Although man’s wisdom can teach us much about
our world and how to thrive in it, it was graciously provided by God, and it won’t
answer the big questions about life.

As for man’s wisdom, it’s borrowed.  God created everything after all, and he gave
us our minds and senses.  God established
the laws of the universe and guides its destiny. Whatever we have been able to
figure has been granted to us. Without God there is nothing to learn about and
we are not blessed with the brains that can retain information and develop knowledge.  So our “wisdom” comes from the Lord.  

And as for the content of that wisdom that we can discern
from the world, it is limited in scope to the physical and mental
processes.  Its wisdom doesn’t look
beyond this world into eternity with any degree of accuracy.  While we can speculate about spiritual
matters and develop our own theories, God had to reveal Himself and His way to
salvation to lead us to the truth.   The
spiritual forces of darkness and our own ideas would lead us to reject the One
true God and cause our “wisdom” to be proven to be futile as we would eventually
be consigned to hell.   So man’s wisdom
is shown to be foolishness.   

As Christians, we have been given the wisdom of God –
the knowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior, and it is only through Him
that we can be saved.  

However, we too should not necessarily consider
ourselves to be “wise in this worldly age”. Because our prior, and continued,
ignorance of “all things” and the fact that “God’s wisdom” was imparted to us
should cause to humble ourselves if we ever consider ourselves wise. We don’t know
everything and even though we may know much, we are still subject to making
mistakes and the possibility of being deceived, perhaps by ourselves.   

So humbly thank the Lord for the things you know about
the world and about His kingdom and instead of considering yourself wise in
this worldly age, think again and seek to share the wisdom that you do have
that really matters, the wisdom of the gospel of Jesus Christ and God’s kingdom,
with as many people as you can.

——————————————————————————————–

Today’s
Bible verse comes to us from “The Quick Scripture Reference for Counseling” By
John G. Kruis.

(
While Bible verses on various topics of Counseling can be found with a quick
google search, we encourage you to purchase this resource to support the late
author’s work. (https://www.amazon.com/Quick-Scripture-Reference-Counseling-Kruis-ebook/dp/B00CIUJZT2?ref_=ast_author_dp )

This
morning’s meditation verses come from the section on Affliction, Discipline,
Chastisement, & Trials.

Hebrews 12:5-6 (ESV)
⁵  And have you forgotten the
exhortation that addresses you as sons? “My son, do not regard lightly the
discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him.
⁶  For the Lord disciplines
the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.”

Today’s
verses fall under the fifth point of our counseling reference guide resource’s
section on Affliction,
Discipline, Chastisement, & Trials

 6. “We must neither make light of God’s
discipline nor lose heart because of it”. 

Today’s verses remind us of
the hard truth that part of our education in the kingdom of God will come
through chastisement. You won’t repent unless you are convicted by the Holy Spirit.
They say that the “truth hurts” sometimes and when the Spirit of Truth shows
you the depths of your depravity, ignorance, sin, guilt, and shame it pains you
to the core and causes you to begin the sometimes painful process of changing
the way you think, act, and live in this world to align with God’s ways of
doing things.  

However, when the Lord
leads you through that crucible to emerge experiencing the freedom and victory
of your new life in Christ, you will know just how loving our heavenly Father
who not only was good enough to forgive us in our trespasses and sins, He loved
us enough to convince us to not stay in darkness He found us in.  God chooses to seek us out and rescue us from
death and from our sins and when I contemplate just how lost and depraved I was
I am often overcome with emotion thinking about how the Lord saved and remade
me.    

So don’t make light of God’s
discipline (dismissing it because you are “saved”) and don’t lose heart because
it calls you to suffer for a time. The “growing pains” have a purpose and when
we understand the God corrects us to make us into the people He created us to
be and to experience the abundant life He has for us, we will understand that
we truly are children of God, His sons and daughters, and that Our heavenly
Father wants the best for His kids.

——————————————————————–

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  The Holy Spirit By A.W. Pink.

As always, I share this information for educational
purposes and encourage you all to purchase A.W. Pink’s books for your own
private study and to support his work.  This resource is available online
for $0.99 (https://www.amazon.com/Holy-Spirit-Arthur-Pink-Collection-ebook/dp/B008CM5292/ref=sr_1_3?crid=AHKAQOM39CTN&keywords=a.w.+pink+the+holy+spirit&qid=1684376225&sprefix=a.w.+pink+the+holy+spirit+%2Caps%2C96&sr=8-3) 

A.W. Pink’s The Holy Spirit

17 – The Spirit Uniting in Christ

One of the principal ends or designs of the Gospel is the
communication to God’s elect of those benefits or blessings which are in the
Redeemer; but the communication of benefits necessarily implies communion, and
all communion as necessarily presupposes union with His Person. Can I be rich
with another man’s money, or advanced by another man’s honors? Yes, if that
other be my surety (one who pledges himself as liable for my debt), or my
husband. Peter could not be justified by the righteousness of Paul, but both
could be justified by the righteousness of Christ imputed to them, seeing they
are both knit to one common Head. Principal and surety are one in obligation
and construction of law. Head and members are one body; branch and stock are
one tree, and a slip will live by the sap of an-other stock when once engrafted
into it. We must, then, be united to Christ before we can receive any benefits
from Him.

Now there are two
kinds of union between Christ and His people: a judicial and a vital, or a
legal and a spiritual. The first is that union which was made by God between
the Redeemer and the redeemed when He was appointed their federal Head. It was
a union in law, in consequence of which He represented them and was responsible
for them, the benefits of His transactions redounding to them. It may be
illustrated by the case of suretyship among men: a relation is formed between
the surety and that person for whom he engages, by which the two are thus far
considered as one—the surety being liable for the debt which the other has
contracted, and his payment is held as the payment of the debtor, who is
thereby absolved from all obligation to the creditor. A similar connection is
established between Christ and those who had been given to Him by the Father.

But something farther
was necessary in order to the actual enjoyment of the benefits procured by
Christ’s representation. God, on whose sovereign will the whole economy of
grace is founded, had determined not only that His Son should sustain the
character of their Surety, but that there should be also a vital as well as
legal relation between them, as the foundation of communion with Him in all the
blessings of His purchase. It was His good pleasure that as they were one in
law, they should be also one spiritually, that Christ’s merit and grace might
not only be imputed, but also imparted to them, as the holy oil poured on the
head of Aaron descended to the skirt of his garments. It is this latter, this
vital and spiritual union, which the Christian has with Christ, that we now
purpose to treat of.^[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

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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)

For those who require the assistance of a Deeper
Walk International Prayer Minister to experience healing or your freedom in
Christ, I highly recommend Christy Edge’s Life on the Edge Freedom Prayer
Ministry. You can schedule a session by going to : https://cedge216.wixsite.com/life-on-the-edge     

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Encouragement
for the Path of Christian Discipleship