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

To see today's photo, go to mt4christ.org or follow me, M.t. Clark, on Facebook or Twitter. Good morning. Today's mildly enhanced photo of a blue cloud-filled skies, green rows of vineyard grapes, and a roadside sign proclaiming the state of Pennsylvania's wish of welcome and its 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 Tammy Lynn 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 of 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, and even overcast blah days can't take that away. But we must also endeavor to have a balanced walk of faith that doesn't deny reality. Telling our others or yourself everything is fine and dandy when you're struggling or hurting is an extreme that we want to —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 the 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 number 2, Deception vs. Truth, of the Steps to Freedom in Christ, to see what ways we 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 today with number 4: Thinking I am wise in this worldly age. The scripture reference for this point is 1 Corinthians 3:18-19, and the word of God says, "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. 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 the 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 a, 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 brightest among us prove they know something because they have used their powers of observation 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 the One who is much wiser and far more powerful than they. Although many— 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 out 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 of our prior and continued ignorance of all things, and the fact that God's wisdom has— was imparted to us, uh, should cause us 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 verses come to us from the Quick Scripture Reference for Counseling by John G. Kruis. This morning's meditation verses come from the section on Affliction, Discipline, Chastisement, and Trials. And today's verses come from Hebrews 12, uh, verses 5 and 6. And the word of God says, and have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons. My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, for— nor be wary when reproved by him. 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's resource section on affliction, discipline, and chastisement and trials. Number 6, or it's the 6th point, sorry, my bad. Number 6 is 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, 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 the— that crucible to emerge experiencing the freedom and victory of your new life in Christ, you will know just how loving our Heavenly Father is, 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 that 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 that 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 are truly— we truly are his children, 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 A.W. Pink's The Holy Spirit as we enter into chapter 17, which is on the Spirit uniting in Christ. And so if you want to see what A.W. Pink has to say about the Spirit uniting in Christ, go to 8— go to mtforchrist.org, and you'll see that resource at the end of today's blog post. As always, we encourage a life of Christian discipleship, walking in the Spirit, agreeing with the Word of God about who you are and how you should live, and following Jesus as an example for living on the earth. And we experience you to keep following and to experience your freedom and your victory in Christ. And if you need help with that, we offer our discipleship series of classes that we did back in 2021 at our local church for Victory Over the Darkness, The Bondage Breaker, and Freedom in Christ. Which are all based on the work of Dr. Neil Anderson and the Word of God. And they were life-transformative for me, and that's why I was trained to teach them. And then, and now I share them via podcast and on our YouTube channel. So if you, if you want to look at that, you know, find these teachings, just go to YouTube, uh, M.t. Clark 247, and look at our playlists, which we have a bunch of. So if you want more Christian resources, we have a bunch of playlists on our YouTube channel. One's on— well, one's from, you know, one that we produced was for the Cost of Discipleship teaching on Bonhoeffer's discipleship, which I think it's 19 lessons that we did a video of., and, um, we have PowerPoint presentations to check out as we read through the text. And we also share our Bible study that we do once a week with Arthur and Susanna Sincotti. So we encourage Bible study, and we offer that program, Bible Study with the Sincottis, to encourage people to, to know God's word and apply it to their lives. So that's that. I am on vacation, so I'm going to try to keep these messages short this week. I'm just glad I can get them done early in the morning before today's activities begin. And, you know, that— and not for nothing, I'm very, very happy that this life of Christian discipleship is transferable to vacation. We can take time out before we start our day You got to get up early to spend time in God's Word, to spend time in prayer, and I utilized the hotel's gym at 2:30 in the morning so I could exercise my body as well as my mind and spirit this morning. So, you know, it's living right in God's kingdom is all-inclusive. It includes our body, minds, and spirits. And if something, some area in our lives out of balance, we, we should look at God's creation, how he created things to be, what his— what things are ideal in terms of our health, a mental, spiritual, and physical, and, and try to go that way. You know, sin is missing the mark, and if our lives reflect that we're missing the mark in some areas we should, you know, go to the Lord and ask him for wisdom and guidance and strength and try to right the ship in those areas. This is how our lives are never completed in terms of sanctification, that there's always something we can grow in, progress in, and have victory over. If you don't have any struggles in your life, it might be because you're self-deceived and you're not, not examining the struggles. Um, so yeah, so we encourage, encourage self-examination and following the Lord in all things. And we encourage prayer, so we're going to pray. Lord God, Heavenly Father, thank you for another day in your kingdom. Lord, we thank you for this time off that we get to enjoy with my wife and stepkids on the road in Erie, Pennsylvania. And, uh, Lord, we just pray for you to go before us today and open our eyes to the things you want us to see and move our steps into the things you would have us do. Uh, we pray for you to keep us safe and, uh, guide and protect us while we're on the road. Um, and Lord, for our friends who are listening or reading today's message, we just pray for them, uh, that you would come alongside them in their prayer request and, uh, their walk of faith, Lord, because we all need your help and we need to know that you're with us. And, um, and we just want to be with you. We want to represent you, uh, on this, on this earth because you've shown us what true life is. And, um, we just want to move into your purposes, uh, and represent your kingdom the best we can. And we need your help, guidance, and strength to do that. So we're calling on you again every day to help us. Lord, we thank you, we praise you, and we love you. And we pray all these things in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.