The Life of Christ R B Thieme III Berachah Church August 21, 2014 Notes Every word in the Bible is true. It teaches us something about God, about His nature, His Person, how He relates to each of us. How the Creator of the Universe has an individual plan designed for every believer’s life. Every one of us, including you! He left no one out. That Plan is perfect because God is perfect. That plan impeccably corresponds to a believer’s abilities, propensities, gifts, status in life. Everything about your life, God knew in eternity past. His plan was formed around you. He knew you would believe. He knew how you would grow up. He knew your environment, what gift He would give you. He did not preordain your believing in Christ, but He made certain that you would have eternal life. Your faith does not give salvation, the Work of Christ does but your faith is necessary. He designed a plan for you. He graciously designed a complete and superlative package. That is His purpose for you and for your life! God did that for you. Since He designed the Plan, contradictions in that plan do not exist. That flawless plan however is often flawed because we are flawed. It is impossible for a believer with an active sin nature to execute exact specifications of His plan. The believers sins and failures are contradictory to the Plan of God. The spiritual life is for you to fulfill the Plan of God. Enter: God’s grace and the resources He has provided, beginning with REBOUND Although we are flawed, imperfect, are sinners and can imperfectly execute His plan, we do have the option to progressively advance in the spiritual life. As we do, we fulfill His plan for our life. To do so, we must grow spiritually. We have been given the assets to utilize that which allows us to fulfill the Plan of God. The grace of God is active in our lives to allow us to fulfill His plan. There is the doctrine that we can metabolize, it gives us the Mind of Christ, His thinking - divine viewpoint. That is how we fulfill His plan. We grow and advance in His plan - not perfect execution - but we can fulfill His will. We are to glorify God - this is a mandate. There is a major roadblock in realizing the accomplishment of His will. It is connected to our sin nature, sin, lack of spiritual growth. THE ROADBLOCK 1. The great blockage to advancing in God’s will and purpose is creeping arrogance in our souls. We are all subject to it. It is the imperfection by which we cannot perfectly execute the Plan of God. 2. Arrogance is the Basic mental attitude sin from which all other mental attitudes stem. 3. Arrogance is the antithesis of the grace of God. Self promotion Total blindness to the grace of God 4. By definition, it is synonymous with “vanity” Nothing but empty pride in regard to one’s person, his attainments or possessions 5. Vanity is often coupled with an excessive desire to be noticed - the “look at me” syndrome A lust for attention For approval or praise from others. And that always preempts glorifying God. It is glorifying self. That is arrogance. How do you glorify God when you are glorifying self? 6. Arrogance opposes utilizing the grace of God and to realize the culmination of His plan in your life. God’s plan marches on and the only thing you have to do is continue to march on in His grace. You are perfectly capable of fulfilling the plan of God with your spiritual life. Rebound is there. If you do not rebound, you are not filled with the Holy Spirit. You are more important than doctrine. 7. Arrogance is a primary reason for believer’s failure to execute the Christian life. We have precedent for this: Satan was the first creature guilty of arrogance as he rebelled against God. IN the throne room. Is 14:14 I will make myself like the most high God That is the ultimate in arrogance! There is no humility, Satan’s mind is absolute arrogance just as God is absolute grace. Satan is the absolute opposite because of the way he thinks! This is the fundamental expression of evil - works over grace! I takes precedence over God. Hell was prepared for Satan and his angels. Satan can never trump the Plan of God! Satan is trying. This country has been a bastion of divine viewpoint and it is eroding in so many areas. That is how Satan operates, it is also the way his world operates. His world operates in arrogance Psalm 94:4 They pour forth words, they speak arrogantly and all who do wickedness flaunt themselves, promote themselves. Speaking arrogantly is same as self promotion. Egocentrity. Every human being is like this without the spiritual life. Without the assets God has given us in grace. Egocentrism is directly opposed to the grace plan of God! In arrogance, we all right into Satan’s plan. In humility, we are in God’s plan. No phony humility. Phony humility is arrogance. When the believer promotes self as pleasing to God, your own effort - forget grace - your effort and that is rampant in Christianity - compassion is Christianity. Feeding the poor. Being nice. They call this Christianity. Those are not Christianity, those are results of Christianity. Christianity is not what you do, it is what you think and it has to be grace oriented thinking. Otherwise it is nothing but a presumptious approach. How on earth can you believe in Christ, faith alone in Christ alone. How can you do that and suddenly think your life is all about what you can accomplish? That is arrogance! Such a believer has given up humility. That is the only attitude acceptable. Humility in a believer of this ilk is replaced by conceit and self-absorption - a virulent form of arrogance. No believer can execute the plan of God in that self centered state. You cannot bring a self serving attitude. We are all products of the grace of God. We must operate with that understanding. When you get eyes off of self and on grace of God, off you go into arrogance. We must operate with that understanding. That operation is grace in action. Oriented to grace is grace in action. Once that mature viewpoint is gained, then humility becomes operational in your life. The by product of grace orientation is humility. There is nothing you can do to have a relationship with God other than what He has done for you! WE are all products of that grace. Here, we get to the disciples. This is difference between grace and humility. The disciples left Caesaria Philipi. They have gotten several lessons and it is about their attitude. Matt 18:1 Who is the greatest? Can you imagine? These guys are standing in front of the greatest Person Who has or ever will live and what question do they ask? Which one of us is the greatest? They ask who is the greatest. They line up and look at the Lord and say pick one of us who is the greatest and they believed that one of them is the greatest because of personal accomplishments. Haven’t they been performing miracles? Preaching? Teaching and representing the Lord. Who is doing it the best? What are they demonstrating? The disciples are demonstrating immaturity. They are less than grace oriented. They do not realize yet, - it is not about them! They don’t know the difference between being great in the Christian life by means of grace orientation (Christ centered) and accomplishing greatness by human effort (egocentric). This is the problem presented by arrogance. The disciples need correction to remove self centeredness to carry out plan and will of God. The apostles of the Church Age are going to understand humility and be grace oriented. We have the epistles that some of the Apostles wrote and they got it right! So we get it right! Jesus gave them a wonderful lesson in humility, by use of a child. Matt 18:1-5 Mark 9:35-37 Luke 9:47-48 We have seen the importance that Christ placed on humility. After those illustrations of dependence upon the Lord, wonderful illustration that is hard to miss But the lesson He has presented has flown right over the disciple’s heads. Luke 9:49 This verse could be very discouraging to a pastor. John said to Him, Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name and we tried to prevent him because he was not following us. Here, John reports an attempt to prevent operation from some unnamed demon hunter. This incident is exactly opposite of what he should have gathered from Lord’s instruction. When they were silent, they realized what idiots they were. He is trying to downplay Jesus’s rebuke of their arrogance. It is damage control by John to rejuvenate status in the Lord’s eyes. They are trying to gain favor of the Lord by what they are doing. It is arrogance! He is trying to prove his sincerity and greatness and instead he is showing exactly the opposite. A bunch of them tried to prevent this guy - they failed to receive this child as the Lord has been teaching them. Accepting the immature believer just as Jesus has described to them. What does it mean when John says “he was not following us” Who is this guy? He had expressed faith earlier either under John the Baptist’s ministry or he had heard the Gospel from Jesus himself and believed and then apart from being in the presence of Christ, he put his faith in practice by casting out demons. This man had been able to cast out some demons in the name of Christ. He had expressed enough faith to do so. IN contrast, the 9 disciples did not have enough faith to cast out demons in epileptic boy. So, here is this one guy expressing faith and now they are trying to stop him from doing what they could not do at that one point. This man was a believer. As John said this, Jesus Christ did not rebuke the man for casting out demons. He did not say to the disciples that it was good that they stopped him. Jesus Christ said “this man was for Him” he was a believer and he had more faith at this point than these guys did. This man that the disciples had rebuked was acceptable to Christ. Arrogance. We are superior to him, the disciples thought. They were the twelve that Jesus picked to be with Him constantly. Easy when mature believers get out of fellowship to be arrogant. Why? We know more doctrine. Arrogance and it happens. It is an occupational hazard for believers who are advancing and get eyes on self. This demon caster was not in presence of Christ as they were. They thought he should have direct sanction of Christ. Their thinking was: how dare anyone else intrude on what Jesus has directly bestowed on them! That is arrogance. First, they were jealous of each other. The Twelve were not the only ones who could serve the Lord. Other believers have a place in the plan of God, even if they are immature. He has a plan for them, just as much as He has a plan for you, even if they are immature, you must not look down your nose at them. That is a lesson in humility. If you find yourself looking at someone with an attitude, they are off base, don’t have doctrine, etc. You have become arrogant - you are not called to judge other believers - EVER! Your superior, arrogant attitude will not do them any good. It may contribute to their rejection of doctrine. Don’t fall into that arrogant trap like these guys did. John’s statement implied they were the only one’s commissioned to drive out demons. These guys deserved to be reprimanded. The Lord makes it clear that they cannot have this arrogance and operate as Apostles. They could not operate in arrogance - they must learn how to handle unbelievers and immature believers, with patience and understanding, just as with a child. He does not want to discourage them, He wants to instruct them. Give them the focus on grace. That is Bobby’s job too. The Word of God is absolute and authoritarian. The mode of teaching doctrine is sometimes dogmatic, sometimes, the pastor being nice. Whatever gets your attention. The Lord was a Master at it and He is making a point. Important point: 1. There are many, many other theologies out there which you would not agree to a greater or lesser extent. Covenant theology is one. Difference between the Church and Israel Some of these viewpoints are unBiblical These people are souls for whom Christ died. They may be believers who know little doctrine. They may be confused on very practical issues - they qualify as children - immature They must be embraced and treated graciously as if they were mature That is a very difficult attitude to maintain when they are in opposition to Bible doctrine by means of spiritual growth. The emotional praise and worship group is not favorable to growing in knowledge of doctrine. It is focused on mystical communication from God, over and above what the Bible teaches. It eschews the academic discipline of learning doctrine. However, they are believers. The Charismatic group has the gospel straight, but that is about all. Their doctrine is poor to say the least - so they qualify as immature children but they are fellow believers and they are to be embraced even if they are antagonistic to you as a believer who emphasizes doctrine. Immature or believers who have rejected correct doctrine - you have no right to get arrogant about them. One of the tough passages for the Colonel was that a bishop was not a striker of persons. It is hard to like emotional Christians. Know what it means:
Posted on: Tue, 02 Sep 2014 21:14:18 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015