Radio Broadcast Monday 03/21/2022

Classic Christianity – A Closer Look at Your Identity in Christ P04 (03-21-22)

Jesus is The Answer to The Last Days

I heard a song this morning and I don’t remember the title exactly, but it was a song about David and it said, the world saw David as a shepherd boy, and God saw him as a king.

And a marvelous marvelous song as I was listening to it this morning I was thinking what ties right into what we’re going to be teaching on today. The world looked at David as just a little shepherd boy out there with his sheep hot stinkin everything else you can imagine, probably uneducated to them. But God said no, there’s a king. There’s a king and folks, and David became a king, You see, David had to discover as well what God thought of him, because he was fully aware of the fact that the world thought of him to as a shepherd boy. And he thought of himself as a shepherd boy, but God revealed to him that No, David, I’m going to make you a king. Well you see folks, what did David have to do with that? I mean, did God make him a king because he was highly educated, and real smooth and suave, and had been to college, especially a Christian one? And all of those types of things? No, he had nothing to do with that at all. That was a selection of God looking at the heart of a young man who was frail, made mistakes, obviously, as we see in later life and yet, God still looked at him as a man after God’s own heart. And He loved him. He said, I’ve got, you’ve got the qualities that I’m looking for. I’m not looking for arrogance, and conceitedness, and puffed upness, and for a person walking around thinking more highly of himself than he ought. I’m looking for a person who sees that everything he has is a gift of God. I’m looking for people who will understand the grace of God that had to be given to me. I couldn’t earn it. I didn’t deserve it. I’m not a nifty person in and of myself, I had to be made righteous in the sight of God. I’m not righteous in and of myself. It’s a heart attitude of seeing yourself as it says, with sober judgment. Now, you say, well, what’s the opposite of sober judgment? Well, it’s intoxicated judgment. And if you’ll observe people who get intoxicated and some of you don’t have to look at others, you can look at yourself and I certainly remember days of my life when I was intoxicated before knowing the Lord.

Well, what’s your opinion of yourself? Well, it’s sometimes, it’s kind of King Kong, and, and Don Juan all rolled into one. And you just can’t understand how in the world you have been made President of the United States as smart and brilliant as you are. I can sit around thinking of some of the conversations that I probably had in some of the bars with my buddies and I’ll tell you I’d love to have had a recording of those today because I could have sold it for idiocy and we absolutely thought it was the smartest stuff that you could ever imagine. I don’t imagine, Bob you ever experienced anything? So, but in other words, liquor does something to you like that. You really, your inhibitions sometimes will go away which just means that you were all tied up to begin with. When I say I have to have a drink in order to lose my inhibitions, that just shows the bondage that you’re living in, when you’re sober, which is which ought to be a clue to you that there’s something wrong that is not going to be corrected by an hour or two of being drunk. Ugh, but you don’t look at yourself with sober judgment. Your mind has been distorted and you think more highly of yourself than you ought. And there’s many times that’s where bar fights and that type of thing happen. Here this guy weighs about 120 pounds, sopping wet, goes up against a 300-pound guy because all of a sudden he thinks he’s King Kong. And next thing you know, why somebody’s trying to get him out of a doorknob. So there’s all kinds of things like that, that take place under intoxication.

You don’t have to have liquor to be intoxicated and it says that your mind can be deceived and your mind can be deranged. And that is a form of spiritual intoxication, which Satan is involved in. And so, whenever we get these exalted opinions of ourselves, we’re not thinking of ourselves with sober judgment. We’re not looking at ourselves of the total helpless condition that we are in apart from Christ. And if we truly believe that, and agree with that, we tend to be rejoicing in the fact of what I have been made, a king, a child of the King, not because of anything that I have done but because of everything that He has done.

It kind of reminds me of the, this is supposed to be a true story of Michelangelo that somebody went along and here’s this big old ugly chunk of marble that was there. There he was chipping away, and somebody said, Michelangelo, what are you doing? And he said, oh, I’m getting ready to free the beautiful angel that lies inside of this ugly chunk of marble. You see to the outside man it was an old ugly useless chunk of marble. To Michelangelo, there was a beautiful angel in there, that was going to come out. And so again, from the world standpoint, why we could look at ourselves and others as just an old ugly chunk of marble, but from God. God, He saw something beautiful in there. And so, and He’s the one who chipped it away. I had nothing to do with that. He chipped it away. And so it says, rather think of yourself with sober judgment in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you. And that’s funny. It didn’t say to think of yourself and sober judgment in accordance with the degrees that you have, or to think of yourself and sober judgment in accordance with your bank account, or to think of yourself in sober judgment in accordance with how many people you think, like, you want it running for sheriff. A popularity contest or to think of yourself in sober judgment in accordance with how wonderful you think you are, but it says to think of yourselves, if you’re going to think of yourself, think of yourself with sober judgment in accordance to the measure of faith God has given you.

Well, what does that talking about in accordance with having big faith and little faith? No, it’s saying how much faith do you have in God in regards to what he says about you. Do I believe when God said that I was dead as a hammer that that was true? I do. Well, then I’m believing truth and accordance with the the measure of faith that he’s given me, I believe that’s true. Do I believe that Christ Jesus came to give me life? I do. Well then I believe that in accordance with the faith that He’s given me. And so when we’re looking at ourselves, it says, am I going to think of myself more highly than I ought not? Not if I got a brain in my head. Not if I understand what God says about me. Now, if you want to get around and believe your own press clippings, I mean walk around and think you’re wonderful because somebody writes a nice article about you, why you’re not thinking in accordance with the faith God is giving you. You’re thinking in accordance with the popularity the crowd is giving you. So folks, what it’s saying is get a life and let’s come to reality and look at ourselves as the one who created you looks at you, and it says that in so doing, you’re going to live a very stable life.

Romans 12:3
³ For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but think of yourself with sober judgment, according to the measure of faith God has given you.

In Romans 12:3, we’ve just discussed. There’s a lot of meat in that little passage of scripture there. What he’s warning us in regards to how we should think about ourselves is don’t think of yourself more highly than you want. You see, folks, we’re living in a day and age where people are saying that we need a better self-image and we need to get a good self-image, and we need to love ourselves. And it’s interesting, isn’t it? That that’s the viewpoint of the secular non-Christian. But how we’ve carried that over into the Christian world and tried to commingle psychology with Christianity. And how in the world would you ever commingle that type of thought with, don’t think of yourself more highly than you ought. It just doesn’t make any sense at all. But, but yet, that’s what the Christian world is doing, is trying to blend and chocolate with milk and come out with pure milk. You can’t do it. You put chocolate milk. You’re going to have chocolate milk. You’re going to distort the purity of the milk and also water down the severity of the chocolate. So you quite frankly, you weaken both of them.

So if you’re going to, if you’re going to be in the psychiatry why I go ahead and stay in there. It’s a worldly philosophy and stay there, but don’t try to bring Christianity into it. It doesn’t have any place there. And if you’re going to teach the truth of the word of God, don’t try to infiltrate into that Freudian thinking and psychological thinking; it doesn’t have any word there, you’re going to be double-minded, that makes you more unstable than you were when you first got into this. A double minded man is unstable in all ways and a double minded man is one who has one foot in the world, thinking the worldly way, and one foot, and God thinking the Godly way. And you become unstable in all ways. And you look and become unstable and you act unstable. Everybody knows you’re unstable. So you’re better off to just be strictly into the world and or strictly into the word of God, but don’t try to commingle those two things.

It’s a sad thing, folks, and I do not know whether these statistics are true or not. But a gentleman was sharing that with me the other day that a huge percentage and the reason I’m not going to give the percentage he used just because it really isn’t verified, but a huge percentage of people who are in mental institutions today claim to be born again, and you would look at that and say, how could that be? Why would that be? When I think the Bible is very clear on why that is because it says a double minded man is unstable in all ways. And that is today referred to as some form of mental illness instability. And what makes you unstable is the fact that you got one foot in the world and one foot in the things of God, and folks, that doesn’t work. You can’t walk down both sides of the street at the same time. Unless you’re a drunk, and you can effectively pretty well do it then. But outside of that, you cannot. You have to get on one side or the other. But once you get on one side or the other, that instability is not anymore. You’re not unstable. If I am lost and I want to be lost, your stable in your lostness and your steadfast. You may have some opinions that are sure are screwy, as far as we’re concerned, but you’re sure stable at them. But when you’re wondering one time, well, I don’t know whether I am, or maybe I am, and maybe I’m not. Maybe I’m saved. Maybe I’m not saved. Maybe I’m a sinner and maybe I’m a new creature. You’re just going to be a mess.

So folks, it’s vitally important for you to understand your identity in Christ and think of yourself with sober judgment. Now, again, what motivated Paul to say that we shouldn’t think of ourselves more highly than we ought? We talk about that. It’s the grace of God. God has already revealed to us by his grace, what we are, who He is, and what and who we have become in Him. And that’s where we stand today at the joy of what He has done for us instead of thinking more highly than we ought of ourselves by thinking we brought these things about.

Now you look what would motivate a person to think of himself more highly than he ought. Well pride. Pride is what caused Satan to be cast from Heaven. If you remember. Pride is what caused Adam and Eve to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In other words. If you eat of this, you will be like God, why you’ll know good and evil, you don’t need God to tell you what’s right and what’s wrong. You’ll know yourself and if you can oh boy. This is a point. If you can know, truly know what is right and what is wrong. What is good and what is evil, and you stick by that knowing that you would be God, you know what it’s saying to us, we don’t have a chance of knowing what is good and evil, and right and wrong apart from God. And even when God tells us, what do we do with it? Rationalize it, situational ethics, everything down the pipe comes along, man is incapable on his own of determining, and having the knowledge of good and evil. God was saying the minute you think you can do that, you put yourself in a position of being God. So pride is what motivates us to think of ourselves more highly than we ought. And we have to come to grips with that. Paul tells us that to counteract this attitude of pride, is to realize that we are who we are today, because of what Christ Jesus did for us at the cross, in us at the very moment of his spiritual birth and is continuing to do every day of our lives as He lives inside us.

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Verse in 2 Timothy 3 1 through 5. It says, mark this there will be terrible times in these last days. Now folks once again, this book has been around for a couple thousand years and I imagine for 2,000 years had any time in that period that someone was reading this passage, they would say boy these days are it. These are the last days because there have always been terrible times. As long as there’s sin in the world, there’s going to be terrible times. There’s always been terrible times. But as you go on to read some of the things that the word of God, says, in regard to the last days, we’ve been in the last days, since day of Pentecost, after Christ completed the finishing, the fulfillment of the law, the upholding of the law, the issuance of the New Covenant. The very next thing on the agenda, as I understand the scripture, is the rapture of the saints. So from that point on until the rapture we’ve been in the last days. But when it’s talking about the last days as it refers to the last days of the last days, there’s a lot talked about that in so much of it centers around the nation of Israel. The wars, the rumors of wars, the earthquakes, all of the different things that are taking place like birth pangs it says, meaning that the closer it comes to birth, the faster, and the closer together are the birth pangs and the more severe, and I believe with all my heart that we are in those days.

I’m not predicting dates. I wouldn’t even dream of doing that. I’m just saying to me, I feel from the depth of my heart, we’re in these last days and this is one of the main reasons for it is, this passage people will be lovers of themselves. That teaching is rampant; positive thinking, think good of yourself, think it and you can do it. In other words Think and Grow Rich, that thing used to be my Bible when I was lost. Think and Grow Rich. In other words, man, be lovers of yourself. I deserve to be a millionaire. I deserve the best that there is to give and I’m going to go out and get it goes the high love myself. And anybody as nifty as me deserves the best. You see also along with that is when my work has shown me, that is I have sometimes worked with the most indigent people, the most down people, people who are living on the street eating out of dumpsters and I have gone to them. And this has even been recently that this occurred with a young man outside of the office that I shared not too long ago.

And you share the word of God. You would think of any group of people on the face of the earth that would be ready to receive good news, it can be a person in that condition. And in most instances, they are the hardest people in the world to get through to, with the gospel. You can give them a meal, but you can’t give them spiritual food. And the reason they’re in the shape they’re in in many instances is not because of bad experiences. It’s because of pride, the way they’ve responded to bad experiences. We all have bad experiences. But you see if your pride is there, you’re saying I don’t deserve to be treated like this. I don’t deserve to have not been a mom and dad’s favorite kid. I don’t deserve to have not gotten an “A” in school when or getting a “B” when I should have gotten that. I don’t deserve that. I don’t deserve this. I don’t deserve this. The world is a terrible place. That’s true. But so what, but if the world is a terrible place now? And I’m so wonderful. Then I can’t tolerate the world. I can’t tolerate it. I’m too wonderful to tolerate this world instead of looking… Well, what about you brother, your evil to the world too, and you are evil. And so am I, in and of myself. But you see that pride is what takes a person to say, ultimately say, I’m just going to cop out and booze and drugs and whatever it might be. I’ve heard people interviewed, people sleeping underneath viaducts and and I’ve talked to people such as that and say, hey, there’s a shelter over here at Salvation Army is over there. There’s a home for you. There’s food for you. I’m not going over there. How can we try to tell me what to do? In other words, I’d rather live in a box under a viaduct.

Then I went for somebody to tell me what to do. Now, you tell me that’s not pride. So it’s not that you cannot have compassion, because I’ve had compassion for people that bait but also have to face that, soberly and realistically that most that I have known. That’s not in all cases that don’t get all my case. If somebody’s really had some tough times, I understand that. But in most of the instances, those people are there because of an unbelievable uncontrollable pride.

So if anybody should be in a lover of self, why then I don’t deserve any hard times. I don’t deserve anything. I deserve the best. And if I can’t get the best, I’m going to cop out this world and I’ll just let the world go on by and the heck, with all of them. That’s a mindset of pride. Now we don’t think of that. See, we think of pride as stuffing your chest out and saying, you know, here I am. I’m wealthy. And that’s also can be a form of pride, but we don’t realize that pride also spells itself in the opposite means as well.

As we conclude our last segment here. We’re working out of 2 Timothy 3, 1 through 5, comparing the modern-day philosophy that says that we need to love ourselves more. With the clear teaching of the word of God that says the people will be lovers of themselves. In other words. We love ourselves too much. So it says in the last days that there will be terrible times and people will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive. Folk, a proud heart is a boastful heart, they’re lovers of money. And because of being lovers of money, they envy anyone who has more than they do. You see this an awful lot in what I would say, in a generation at least behind my generation, and I’m not saying it wasn’t in my generation or before it. But coming out of the depression years, which is where my parents came from, people had to, like a commercial says, earn money the old-fashioned way, or make money the old-fashioned way, earn it. And that’s the only way that you were going to do. And so we grew up watching that work ethic that a man who works is going to eat. And so there were no shortcuts to success. You watched your parents progressively obtain more as they worked.

And we also grew up with that same work ethic getting out of school for me, there was no free lunch. There was no instant becoming millionaires. That’s what I wanted to do because I’ve been taught that was what was going to make me happy, but I knew I was going to have to work for it and I was gonna have to work awfully hard for it and there were no free gifts. There’s no shortcuts to that. So, but today it seems like you’ve got people who sit around and they see people that are in their 50s and 60s that have accumulated a few things and there they are in their 30s and they’re jealous and envious over what their parents have worked, 30 more years in the Navy, part of it alive to get, and you become envious, and jealous of that type of thing. And I want it right now. I remember when Amy and I first moved to Dallas and we had a good job, at least it was considered a good job. In America, that’s one of the leaders in its category without question. It’s the leading building products manufacturer in the world.

And so, it was a prestigious job and it was a very good job, but starting fresh, married with a baby on the way, we moved into a little apartment. We still drive by it in Dallas, that was on the outskirts of Dallas back then, a little old tiny apartment. We had no carpet on it. I had a foot locker from the Army. Thank God, I had gotten that issued and that’s what we sat on and a chair and a card table and a bed that was just down on the floor, just a box spring and mattress and that was our furnishings. And after a while while I can remember that old green chair that we thought was pretty ugly, want to think about it now, but we bought that chair and after a while, we were able to get a couch and then Mom and Dad gave us a table and an old television set that was there and and that’s how we started.

And you accumulate and you save as you go through life today. In many instances a person comes in saying, man, I want a full furnished and not just furnished, okay. I want it with the finest you can get and I want it overnight. And I want an airplane. I want a boat and I want all these kinds of things. I can’t earn it and don’t have any money, but I wanted it, I deserve it. You say what is this? What is this? Well, it’s pride folks. It’s there. Something that is being built. Built into the educational system. The programmatic things that come from television, or whatever it might be what is distorting people’s minds unbelievably in the fact that I deserve it. And Bob I believe that I saw that come in a number of years ago. I could name the president. I’m not going to but I can name it when it came in, when all of a sudden the emphasis was human rights. We have human rights. Well, what does that mean? Well, you’ve got rights that are more important than your family rides and and and your family rights are much more important than the local rights, and your local rights are much more important than national rights. And all of a sudden, what right does the government have to tell me? I am the center. I’m the focal point. I’m the center of the universe. And what right does anyone have to tell me to do anything?

And so we all have rights, we have civil rights. You have rights to be homosexuals and demand to adopt children. We have it, doesn’t matter that there is a Military Academy full of men, I’m a woman, I want in. And and, and we’re letting them in, you know, and you sit there and your mind is boggled. You know, I’m surprised that some man hadn’t tried to demand to try out for the Miss America contest. You know, it’s and I’m sure after mentioning this somebody will think of it. So but you know, we’re just into this human rights, said there’s no the whole doesn’t mount to do anything anymore. Well, folks, that mentality was the beginning of the end in this country because it’s like Kennedy said, don’t think what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country and in other words, there’s something more important than you.

And the preservation of your family and a preservation of our nation is more important than you. That’s why guys went off to war to die. The preservation of this country was more important than my life. Now you see that’s a hard nut to crack today because my life’s most important thing, the world upon God, the center of the universe, there’s nothing more important than me. The presentation of the Gospel is more important than my reputation. And if a man wants to look upon another man, as we’re talking about, there in an unforgiving, slanderous, brutal, treacherous rash, conceited, way. That’s their problem. They look at that’s why they looked at Paul, but you see, Paul saw there was something more important than what people thought about him. I mean, you want to talk about an improper self-image. What about old Paul? That man had been beaten so many times. It’s unbelievable. I’d think I’d get the point after a while. If he didn’t have his identity established in Christ, he certainly didn’t have a real good identity with people. And at the end of his life, after everything, he had done. He said, everybody’s left me. Even Barnabas left me, and then asked to send his cloak. cold. And my parchments, my Bible. I want to read.

So, from World standpoint why Paul didn’t have the popularity of the crowd, but you see he didn’t live for his human rights. He said I set my human rights aside because there’s something more important than me. And that’s the proclamation of the Gospel.

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