Many Paths to God – Lies of the Enemy #1 – Purity 1013

To see today's photo, go to mt4christ.org or follow me, M.t. Clark, on Facebook or Twitter. Today's photo of a blue sky view through the tops of trees comes to us from yours truly, as I decided to capture what I saw when I decided to look up somewhere along the 4.2-mile expanse of the Wilkinson Trail at the Saratoga National Historical Park, as my wife and I decided to do do something with the pleasant spring day that the Lord provided us with this past Saturday. Despite getting our feet wet because of some marshy portions of the trail, and because Tammy Lynn decided to trust me when I didn't know where I was going, uh, we had a pleasant hike and day together. Uh, afterwards I was struck by just how appropriate our spontaneous hike turned out to be, as Saturday was Holy Saturday. A day that many Christians use to reflect on the death of Jesus, who died for, for their freedom. And we were— and, and, you know, it was appropriate because we were walking the grounds of the— of a revolutionary battlefield where regular men paid the ultimate cost for American independence. It was also— it also seemed to be fitting because we had been to the site of what was essentially the last battle of the American Revolution while on vacation in Virginia. With our visit to Yorktown. Here we were again with what was essentially the first decisive American victory of the Revolution and the first time that a British army ever surrendered in the field of battle, ever, causing the French to lend their support to the American cause that eventually was won. History really is amazing, but when we consider that our Sovereign God is is directing it. And we really get a sense, um, of how these fortunate events were purposely crafted to lead us where we are today as a nation and as individuals. That's right, where we are today has everything to do with who God is, who we are, whether or not we have been called by him into his kingdom, and what we have done in response to that call if we have heard it. So it is with this consideration on my mind that I have decided to begin a new series that will be of my own design and creation, as I feel led to examine the lies of the enemy, uh, that I have encountered throughout my life that may or may not have caused me to stay in darkness for the 38 years of my life before the light of the gospel brought me to life everlasting. And before my faith in Christ compelled me to get on and stay on the path of Christian discipleship. I will rely on the Holy Spirit to guide me in this new venture and would like to temper expectations now. I have limited time each day with which to write, and I realize that some of these lies of the enemy could require an entire book to unpack all the different aspects of the deceptions that would cause us to doubt or draw away from the Lord and the life of faith he is calling us to. So forgive me beforehand for my limitations and for the spontaneous nature of this new series. And we begin with lie number 1: there are many paths to God and his kingdom. Uh, this particular lie is one of the, one of the favorites of our current society and is increasing in popularity as more and more people either consider non-Christian philosophies or religions, or have claimed non-religious or atheist status. Bumper stickers proclaiming coexistence, tolerance, or diversity advocate for a peace, uh, despite our individual differences, which is a noble sentiment, but it does so in a universe that is enmeshed in a spiritual war where there is actually no peace to be had other than the peace with God that is found in Christ alone. Christians just finished celebrating Easter, or Resurrection Sunday, which proclaims that Jesus Christ is who he said he was: the Messiah, the Son of God, and God the Son. The resurrection proves that Christ is God and that everything he said was true. Among the many things that Jesus said that reveals the falsehood, um, that there are many paths to God in his kingdom is John 14:6. Where he said to doubting Thomas, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." Here Christ makes the claim for the exclusivity of himself to bring one to God, and the resurrection proves that his claim was valid. I myself was greatly deceived, um, by this lie of the enemy, uh, before fully understanding the gospel and coming to faith in Christ, I consider the doctrine of the exclusivity of Jesus to, to save as quite unloving, and even spent several years of my life as a follower of a false religion. However, I realize now that God is gracious to provide even one way to be forgiven of our sins, and the historical witness of Jesus begs us to seriously consider the implications of what he said and did and the fact that he was resurrected. This forum doesn't give me a lot of time to convince people that— who may not believe, and so I offer apologist Frank Turek's website, crossexamined.org, and will every day— will provide it every day of this series for those curious enough to intelligently research the claims of the Christian faith. So there you have it. I know I am not even scratching the surface of these big lies and am perhaps not really providing enough evidence to convince someone to surrender to the Lordship of Christ, but that's not my job. The Holy Spirit will convict those, uh, God calls unto salvation. I can only point to the truth and testify of the many lies that kept me from the abundant life that the Lord had for me all along. So come back tomorrow and I will reflect on this live some more, or might look at another. But until then, I want to encourage you to seek the Lord and ask him to reveal himself to you if you don't know him, or to keep on walking and talking with God and live according to his wisdom and guidance if you do. Today's Bible verse comes to us from the New Living Translation Bible Promise Book for Men. This morning's meditation verse is verse is Isaiah 26:3, and it says, you will keep in— you will keep— you will keep in perfect peace all who trust in you, all whose thoughts are fixed on you. And yes, for those who don't know, before the 40-day journey with Dietrich Bonhoeffer, we used to share a verse a day from a little devotional that my wife gave me as a gift, the New Living Translation Bible Promise Book for Men, and we're almost through it. And as we, and as we are picking up where we left off on page 70 of 84, so I want to finish what we started by sharing the verses, uh, and just a thought, a few thoughts and observation, observations regarding, uh, what it brings to us each day. So today's verse tells us like it is, we will be in perfect peace when we trust in the Lord and when we keep our thoughts fixed on him. Our faith in Jesus gives us peace with God, and when we realize what he— we have received through the gift of God's grace, we need no longer fear death or doubt the truth of God's word. When we think about the joy of our salvation and how God has led, uh, has led the, the history of the world and our personal path of faith, we should experience the fruit of the Spirit of peace. But this peace is conditional. We have to have faith in Christ, and we have to trust the Lord and keep our thoughts fixed on him to experience it. Skepticism doesn't help us. Doubts and questioning the goodness of God doesn't give us peace. So trust the Lord, learn from his word, apply it to your life, and experience his peace. As always, I invite all to go to mtforchrist.org, where I always share insights from prominent Christian theologians and counselors to assist my brothers and sisters in Christ for their walk. Today we continue sharing from A.W. Pink's The Sovereignty of God as we continue in chapter 12, which is based— well, the title of the chapter is The Value of This Doctrine: The Sovereignty of God. And today we're sharing point 10 as we almost draw to an end of this resource, which says it provides a resting place for the heart. So if you want to be able to rest your heart. Um, the doctrine of the sovereignty of God is certainly a good place to rest it. Knowing that God's in control and that he's bringing all things together for, for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose, that gives you peace and, uh, it allows a place for your heart to rest. So if you want to read about what A.W. Pink has to say about that resting place for your heart, go to m.tforchrist.org And, um, and you know, you'll find it at the end of today's recent, uh, end of today's blog post. Um, speaking of rest for the heart, my heart is resting today because Easter, God love it, uh, is over. And, uh, you know, um, I love the resurrection, uh, of Jesus Christ. However, what I don't love is the way people celebrate the biggest holiday, spiritual holiday of the year Um, through Easter egg baskets and foolishness. No offense to those who do that stuff. I know it's fun for the kids and everything, but, but after seeing Facebook posts of families that, you know, did an Easter egg hunt but doesn't appear they went to church, it causes me great— you know, grieves, grieves my heart. Um, so I'm resting. My heart can rest that now we're going to get on with, you know, And now it's time for the people who only observe their faith twice a year to, um, to depart again into, you know, into the ultimate— talk about good faith, uh, the faith that comes, you know, from somehow I'll— I have a relationship with the Lord when we spend twice a year with him at a worship service but spend no time in his word or do nothing to follow what he tells us to do with our lives, or little, you know. And not for nothing, um, I, I hope I don't sound snarky, um, but I've come to discover that peace, um, that comes from my thoughts being fixed on the Lord and, um, from turning from my sin and, and following him and gleaning from the words, um, God's words, wisdom. And, uh, you know, despite all the things that, you know, fell apart when I decided to, uh, follow the Lord, everything came back together and, uh, he made all things new and, uh, He led me out of the darkness into a life of victory, and the Lord has blessed me time and time again. And yesterday, he continued to bless me as I spent a lovely day with my wife before departing from my Riverside home. But at my church service, a gentleman from our church approached me about joining the Freedom— Celebrate Freedom Recovery Ministry., that'll be starting up in May. And I was greatly encouraged for his boldness to serve and immediately accepted him as part of the team. And I already have it in my mind that he'll lead the, the men's discussion group. Um, this man has a history of recovery. He has got more years sober than I do. And, um, you know, so I— he's got experience in those rooms and, uh You know, he also needs to grow in his faith. He admittedly said as much, that he has recovery, but he doesn't necessarily have all that he had, all that he needs in his life of faith. And so I think the Lord brought him to, you know, talk about an opportunity to disciple someone, um, you know, through service we can disciple people, through these, this ministry we can teach. And, uh, you know, you're there to serve, but man, you— I know because because I was there to serve and learn when I went into a Christian recovery program. And he's gonna serve and he's gonna get everything that everyone else is getting, and he'll be able to speak about what the Lord did in his life, even though he might not have been perfectly walking with the Lord. The Lord sets people free. All recovery comes from the goodness of God, because why? Because the Lord puts it on our hearts what's right and wrong. And the fact that we're addicted to something, you know, is wrong. You know, it's not how God intended for our lives to be. And that's a pretty basic fact of God's common grace. This isn't how you should be living your life. Um, and you don't— you could be of any faith and get that. But God's, you know, that's God's standard. And that's, you know, will for us is poured out on the earth. And that's why there can be goodness and and, you know, acts of love and kindness, even in people who don't know Jesus Christ, because God's goodness, you know, permeates the world. He wrote his law on our hearts. We know what's right and wrong to some extent because God put it in us. And so, you know, and, and if I wasn't blessed by this gentleman stepping forward, um, a woman I had contacted about, um, being the leader for the women's discussion group confirmed that she, she is ready to serve. And she actually confirmed it before and I didn't see her message, so I was like, I don't know about— I don't know what I'm gonna do on the other side. But apparently she had contacted me last week and I just didn't get her message. It was sitting there for me to see it, but I, I missed it. And somehow— but luckily, after she saw my announcement about this gentleman joining our team, she said, hi, did you get my message? Um, I did. And so we're, we're happy to, um, welcome Debbie Deo and Scott Salvador to the, um, the Celebrate Freedom team. I don't know why I was hiding their names. I already put them out there on Facebook, so yikes. Uh, now they're out in the blog too. Uh, well, not in the blog, but the podcast. Anyway, well, it is Monday and, uh, I have to work. And, uh, unlike last week, right, well You know, things lately at work have been up and down. Different things are needed. They have different expectations of what I should do, and quite honestly, I think they, you know, this week's sort of up in the air, and I'll find out when I walk into work today. But that's life. We don't always know what's gonna happen next. But the thing is, we, when we walk with the Lord, we walk forward in confidence that we're capable of facing whatever challenges the day has before us. And we just thank the Lord that we have a job and that we can be used by him to help people and to earn the money that we'll— we need to support ourselves and our family, um, in whatever way that is. But, uh, so that's today. And, um, although some of us have spring break, which is nice, so I pray for the people who have spring break. For the rest of us, let's get to work. Lord God, Heavenly Father, thank you for another day in your kingdom. Lord, we thank you so much for all that you've done for us. Lord, we pray for you to bless our current study with the lies of the enemy. Lord, I believed a lot of them, um, and so let's, let's use this. Let's, let's, uh, let's use this opportunity to, to expose those lies and to, um, you know, uncover the truth of, of the gospel of Jesus Christ and present that to people in a way that'll hopefully can, you know, encourage them to, to follow you. And to know you and, uh, to put your, you know, put their thoughts on you to experience that peace, uh, that comes when they, uh, decide to walk and talk with you, Lord. Lord, we pray for anyone who's listening or reading today's message. We pray for you to come alongside them in their prayer request. Or we thank you for your faithfulness, and, um, we just pray that you go before us today, open our eyes to the things you want us to see, and lead our paths in the things you'd have us do. Because all we want to do, Lord, is, is, is celebrate our freedom in Christ and represent you in your kingdom here on Earth. So, so, Lord, we, we thank you, we praise you, and we love you. And we pray all these things in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.