out like this. There is a unique way to live this
Christian life and it’s based on two things. It’s based on number one, the filling of God the Holy
Spirit and that’s our first problem-solving device because when we become a Christian, we still
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have a sin nature. This doesn’t go away and we’re still capable of sinning so when we sin, we are
able to use the rebound technique, problem-solving device #1. If we go to God and do what 1
John 1:9 says,
“If we confess our sin, He is faithful and just to forgive us and to purify us from
all of our wrongdoing.”
This gets you back in fellowship with God. You see, when we sin, we
break fellowship with God. The Holy Spirit is quenched and the Holy Spirit is grieved when we
sin. Keep in mind that sin can be in three areas, something we think, something we say, or
something we do. When we get back in fellowship, we are confessing the sins that we
committed, not to the priest, but to God because you are a priest. You are a believer priest. You
don’t need a priest to confess your sins to, you go right to the Father. You can confess your own
sins and be filled with the Holy Spirit. The minute you name your known sins to God, then the
Holy Spirit is no longer quenched. He’s no longer grieved and now He’s filling you. The
objective is,
“The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness,
meekness, and mercy”
(Galatians 5:22-23). This is the humility profile of Jesus Christ and as we
grow, as we mature, we develop this profile by means of the Holy Spirit. As we,
“Study to show
ourselves approved unto God”
(2 Timothy 2:15),
“Grow in the grace and the knowledge of our
Lord and Savior Jesus Christ”
(2 Peter 3:18),
“Take His yoke upon us and learn of
Him”
(Matthew 11:29), then we begin to take on the character of Christ. We begin to emulate
Christ. We begin to replicate the life of Christ to our friends. They see Christ in us and as we
grow, there are some attitudes that we must develop. This is what this show has been about the
last few weeks. I’ve highlighted several things that are critical for you to do to make the most of
the time that God allows you to have on this planet. He is only going to allow you so much time
and you cannot afford to waste time and so I identified some things and we have been through
them. By the way, I showed you the two different words for time in the Bible. I don’t know if you
remember but let’s go back. One of them is
chronos.
It’s a noun, it refers to the time on the clock.
It’s 8:07 PM, this is
chronos
. Then there’s
kairos
, this is also translated time. It’s a moment in
time measured by the quality of that time. When 2 Corinthians 6:2 says,
“This is the day of
salvation,”
it’s
kairos
. It’s not talking about at 8:07 PM you need to get saved. It’s talking about
this day, this is the day, this is the time. It’s time for us to grow up. It’s time for us to take our life
seriously, that’s
kairos.
As we get time right, then we see the need to be punctual and I dealt with
punctuality on one of our radio shows. Punctuality is one of our attitudes that are very critical,
then to have patience, then to set priorities in your life. Today as we move forward we want to
move into being prudent.
Prudence is very necessary for any believer in Jesus Christ.
We
have got to have prudence. It’s a required character asset. You say “What is prudence?” You
should look at yourself and say, “Am I a prudent person?” The definition is, it’s the quality of
being cautious. It’s good judgment that allows us to avoid certain dangers in our life, having
correct knowledge about how things should be done so that we determine the right thing to do in
any situation.
In God’s plan, prudence is the same as being faithful.
There are some concepts
concerning faithfulness that we need to look at today. Here’s the first one and I don’t ever want
you to forget this.
God is always faithful to you.
1 Corinthians 10:13 tells you. I don’t know
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what you’re going through, what difficulty you may be facing, but here’s what it says.
“No trial
has overtaken you that is not faced by others and God is faithful
[there it is, God’s always
faithful, this is a descriptive adjective meaning He’s reliable].
He will not let you be tried beyond
what you’re able to bear, but with the trial will provide a way out so that you may be able to
endure it.”
Listen to 2 Thessalonians 3:3,
“The Lord is faithful,”
same word,
pistis
and this
means that,
“He will strengthen you and protect you from the evil one.”
There’s only one
person in your life that is totally faithful and this is God. His divine faithfulness is His grace
expression to you using His perfect character as a basis for this expression.
For example I
just gave you 1 John 1:9. I told you,
“If we confess our sins, He is faithful and He just to forgive
us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
He is faithful, He’ll do this every time. Every time
you know you’ve sinned and you go to the Father and admit your sin, which is the key to being
filled with the Spirit, when you admit your sin, He’s faithful and just [He does it every time] to
forgive you and cleanse you. Then listen to 1 Thessalonians 5:24,
“Faithful is He that calls you,
who will also do it.”
“Great is Your faithfulness”
(Lamentations 3:23).
Here are a few
principles on faithfulness that are worth remembering. Faithfulness or reliability is not just a
divine characteristic. In other words, if you can rely on God, does it seem to make sense that
maybe He would like to be able to rely on you, that God would like for you to be faithful also?
God fully expects the same personality trait in your life as a mature believer. In other words, He
expects you to be faithful, to be trustworthy, to have integrity. The absence of your faithfulness
or your reliability is called faithlessness. This means you’re not dependable. God can’t depend on
you and this usually means you’re easily distracted or you get easily discouraged. You don’t live
your life replicating the life of Christ, so you’re not giving maximum glory to God. You’re not
glorifying God with your life. You’re not living faithfully. Some people are going to tell you,
“You know brother, if you’re going to be faithful,” and they’ll come up with a list of to-do’s and
you will be to-doin until you can’t to-do anymore. Who knows how many to-do’s they’ve got?
This is not faithfulness, this is legalism. This is putting you in binds and chains and telling you,
“If you were really faithful brother, you would do this and you would do that.” If you’re faithful,
you will stay filled with the Spirit. If you’re faithful, you will grow in the grace and the
knowledge of your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. If you’re faithful, you are to replicate the life of
Christ by means of the filling of the Holy Spirit. Whatever your spiritual gift is, between you and
God you’ll figure it out, if you will let Him use you, He will use you in that venue. Faithless is
not something you want to be called. Faithlessness is not being true to your allegiance of duty. In
other words, if you’re faithless, if you have a lack of fidelity, if you’re disloyal, it’s sort of like the
military soldier going AWOL.
Luke 12:48 says,
“From everyone who has been given much,
much will be required and from the one who’s been entrusted with much, even more will be
asked of him.”
The more you know, the more you’re going to be responsible for. God expects
faithfulness on your part. Now, if you’re a mature believer, I don’t know, what do you call a
mature believer? Well, if you’ve been a Christian a few years and you’ve stayed filled the Holy
Spirit and you sit under the ministry of a well-qualified pastor, you should be able to say by now,
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“I’m probably a mature believer.” You’re not going to stay in the first grade all of your life unless
you get into a routine of going to church an hour and a half a week. If you go 30 minutes on
Sunday morning, 30 minutes on Sunday night, 30 minutes on Wednesday, you’re never going to
grow up. I don’t care how much the pastor teaches you, you’re not going to grow up. It takes
more than an hour and a half a week. What if you sent your kid to the first grade an hour and a
half a week? They would never get out of the first grade. When 2 Timothy 2:15 says,
“Study to
show thyself approved unto God,”
it means a daily routine. Daily you sit under the ministry of
the pastor. Daily you take in God’s Word and there’s nothing wrong with listening to the Word of
God taught to you every day by a well-qualified pastor. You say, “Well, how do you do this?”
You do it maybe the same way I do it, by DVD or an MP3, and I listen to my pastor teach me the
Word of God on a daily basis. I do it at home at night in my study and I’ve got my Bible, my
notebook, I’m listening, I’m learning and as I learn I recall. You know that the rate of forgetting
can exceed the rate of learning and you’re in trouble when this happens. The prudent believer is
going to have a high security clearance with God. God’s going to be able to trust you. He’s going
to be able to give you things, to entrust you with things because you’re faithful and you will do
the right thing in the midst of the angelic conflict. We are in an arena of contention, you know
this. This is the one thing that Satan wants you to do, to be faithless, turn your back on the Lord,
go down the My Way Highway, do what you want to do, get distracted, get discouraged, and let
him defeat you. If you’re doing the right thing, if you’re going to live the way God wants you to
live, this means doing the right thing when nobody is looking. Do you think no one is looking,
that nobody sees you? Listen to 2 Chronicles 16:9,
“The eyes of the Lord run to and fro
throughout the whole earth so that He may strongly support those whose heart is completely
His.”
The eyes of the Lord, this is an anthropopathism, it’s a big word I know. What it means is
we’re using human characteristics to reveal and explain God’s policy toward man. God doesn’t
have eyes, not like you and I do. He’s omniscient, He’s all-knowing. He’s omnipresent, He’s
everywhere. He’s immanent, and He’s transcendent. To try to help us understand what God
knows, the writer says that the Lord has eyes and He’s looking at you. Job 34:21,
“For His eyes
are upon the ways of man and He sees all of his steps.”
This is not God sitting in heaven on a big
white throne watching the earth and watching everyone of us. This is the way we sometimes
think about it in our mind but it’s different. God is omniscient. God can be in your church and in
my church on Sunday morning and even when we’re gone, He is still there because He’s
immanent and transcendent. Some say, “We had a great worship service and we felt the Lord. He
was here tonight.” He’s there every night. He’s in you. He lives in you and sometimes we get
emotional when we think that we called God into the house and God is always in this house
because of His omnipresence. He’s able to be in your city and in my city at the same time and
you don’t have any more of Him than I do. Keep in mind that Satan, a.k.a. the devil, is not
omnipresent. He cannot be in different places at one time. He is a created being so he can only be
in one place at one time. Proverbs 15:3,
“The eyes of the Lord are in everyplace watching evil
and watching good.”
So we understand these things, that the Lord is well aware of our
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faithfulness and He’s well aware of our faithlessness. Proverbs 13:15,
“Good understanding
gains favor, but the way of the unfaithful is hard.”
When you allow yourself to get out of
fellowship, you don’t stay filled with the Holy Spirit, you don’t take in God’s Word consistently,
you’re not growing in the grace and knowledge of your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, you’re
going to have a hard life because you’re going to go down the My Way Highway. You’re going to
be thinking in terms of human viewpoint, not divine viewpoint. This word unfaithful, Proverbs
13:15,
“Good understanding gains favor, but the way of the unfaithful is hard.”
Unfaithful is
often translated in the Hebrew, the transgressor or the treacherous one. The Hebrew word is
bagad
and it’s a verb that means being deceitful. Actually, it means to hide something under a
garment, to act covertly, even fraudulently like to steal money or in a bank, have some guy as an
investor and he steals all your money. He’s a fraud. He asked covertly so that when you want to
cash in, there’s nothing there, a Ponzi scheme sort of guy, that’s kind of the idea. God can’t
depend on Ponzi’s. In Joshua 7:10, there’s a place there where,
“They’ve stolen and deceived the
people of Israel and put what they stole among their own stuff.”
This was after the battle of
Jericho and it’s dealing with the sin of Achan, the unfaithful transgressor (Joshua 7:19 and 21).
Achan was told not to take anything out of Jericho once they defeated them at the battle of
Jericho but he did. He stole some things, some garments and some silver. He hid it in his tent and
God knew it and they were not able to defeat the enemy because of the sin in the camp. I’m
going to tell you something. If you’re married and you have a family and there’s sin in the camp,
it’ll ruin your family. If you try to hide it, you try to make like it’s not there, it’ll ruin your family
because you’re being unfaithful. You’re sinning, you’re hiding something from your spouse and
you know it. Whenever the rate of forgetting exceeds the rate of learning then you can begin to
have forgetfulness. If you’re forgetful, it fuels unfaithfulness. It fuels you not being prudent
because you forgot the things that you learned in Sunday school. You forgot the things that you
learned from your pastor and so when the time comes to do something and do it the right way,
you can’t remember and so you are faithless. You say, “Where did you get some idea like that
Rick, about forgetting this?” Well listen to Isaiah 17:10.
“You have forgotten the God of your
salvation.”
Here is the prophet Isaiah speaking to the Northern Kingdom of Israel when they
committed the sin that they were expressly told not to do. Listen to what Moses wrote in
Deuteronomy 8:11,
“Beware that you do not forget the Lord your God by not keeping His
mandates, His judgments, and His statutes which I command you today.”
One of the things that
happens in the downfall of the nation, is the promises of God, the provisions of God, the
principles of God are forgotten and people begin to operate only on human viewpoint.
When you take God out of the schools, when you take God out of the public arena, people don’t
remember certain things, and they forget it, and they are easily persuaded to follow a lie.
No
believer can ever be faithful if he doesn’t keep growing.
You have to keep growing and you
grow sometimes by looking back, reviewing what you did, and looking forward or advancing.
You look back and remember what you studied and you advance and look forward. Faithfulness
is one of the requirements for a local church. If you’re in a church, it can’t function without the
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people being faithful. Your pastor has to be faithful to study and teach. The congregation has to
be faithful to learn what he’s teaching and then apply it into their life. No church can function if
its members come only when it’s convenient. Some churches actually do this today. They
schedule services to make it convenient for members to attend.
Sacrifice, faithfulness, patience,
they are all key attributes in the local church.
They are all required to have a local church. I
don’t know what your local church is like but it has to have these things. Now, we move from
prudence into the right perspective in your life following the letter P. We’re using the P’s
alliteration. Having the right perspective means you advance spiritually. Your advance, the way
you grow, depends on your perspective of history. In other words how you look at things, how
you see yourself. Arrogant people don’t see themselves as they really are. They see themselves as
they think they are. If they look into the mirror, an arrogant person doesn’t see the real him. He
sees an illusion. He sees something that’s not really him and he becomes self-centered. If you’re
self-centered, self-centered believers have the wrong perspective in the spiritual life. This self-
centered arrogance is the sister of self-righteous arrogance and both of those people are blind.
The self-centered person is blind. The self-righteous person is blind. Neither one of them see
themselves as they really are. They do not have the right perspective about life. Self-centered
believers, they have no objectivity when it comes to other people because they always blame
other people for what they themselves are actually responsible for but they never take credit or
responsibility for it. They always blame it on somebody else. They’re childish, proud, and
intolerant of criticism. Self-centered people often want to be in the limelight and boast. They can
be argumentative and get easily bored. This sort of self-centeredness, if you have it or you know
somebody that has it, it’ll destroy any capacity for happiness in their life. For example, all
criminals are self-centered. I mean, they justify why it’s okay to steal from you, they’re self-
centered. Most politicians are self-centered.
The only cure for a self-centered person is
humility, whether this humility is genuine or whether this humility is enforced by God’s
discipline.
This is the only way you can break this self-centeredness. Paul’s perspective is seen in
Philippians 3:8 when he said,
“Doubtless, I count all things but loss except for the excellency of
the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and I count
everything in my life but dung that I may win Christ.”
Dung, it’s called a
skubala
metaphor.
Dung is scat, its excrement. He said, “Everything I did in the past is all excrement. [It’s far more
than that]. I consider everything to be worthless because I’m much better off knowing Christ
Jesus my Lord and it’s because of Him that I think of everything as worthless. I threw it all away
in order to gain Christ.” In Paul’s perspective, religious self-confidence meant nothing to him.
Occupation with Christ was the most important thing to him. I hope you’re learning. I enjoy
hearing from you and love hearing how the Lord is working in your life. There’s a lot I have to
say about this. Until next week I’m your host Rick Hughes saying thank you for being with me
on The FLOT Line