Moral Boundaries Part 2 What’s next? In Part 1, we considered the end result of the unlimited pursuit of pleasure without boundaries – whether it be the pinnacle of rigorous intellectual success; the heights of sustained adulation by sports fans, movie goers or music lovers; the unrelenting pursuit of amassing more and more wealth; the hedonistic enjoyment of everything sensual as the chief goal of life; or many other paths which cast aside all boundaries. Writing in “The Times of India” 2/2/12, Ravi Zacharias noted: “One of the most common and fearsome refrains I hear from those who have reached the pinnacle of success is that emptiness still stalks their lives…. After his second Wimbledon victory, a noted tennis player surprised the world by admitting to his long drawn-out struggle with suicidal tendency. Author Jack Higgins has said that the one thing he knows now that he wished he had known as a younger man is that when you get to the top, theres nothing there.” Suppose you have chosen to follow the Lord Jesus Christ, who used an agrarian metaphor and declared, “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep…. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture…. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” (John 10:7-11) Once you have accepted Christ as “the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6), how do you stay on course? There are several ways, but let’s first consider a very important one: he Bible, the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. The Lord whom we’ve chosen to follow said to Jews, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life” (John 5:39-40). In context, these are the Hebrew Scriptures, which Christians call the Old Testament. Romans 3:2 calls them “the oracles of God.” Furthermore, Jesus chose twelve representatives called apostles (knowing that one of them would fall away and be lost). He told them, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you” (John 16:13-14). The apostles are the authoritative teachers of Jesus Christ and the churches established by the apostles have compiled their teaching in a group of writings called the New Testament. The apostle Peter called the letters of the apostle Paul “the Scriptures” (2 Peter 3:15-16). Without knowing the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments – the Bible – you cannot follow the way taught by the Lord Jesus Christ. In the eighteenth century, the open air preaching of Anglican ministers John Wesley and George Whitfield led multitudes to come to a saving faith in Christ. Wesley, educated at Oxford University and a well-read man, had a focus. He said, “I am a man of one Book.”
Posted on: Sun, 13 Jul 2014 04:34:22 +0000
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