Living in a Perverse World
Part 3
Philippians 2:12-16
12 Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only,
but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.
13 For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.
14 Do all things without murmurings and disputings:
15 That ye may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the
midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world;
16 Holding forth the word of life; that I may rejoice in the day of Christ, that I
have not run in vain, neither laboured in vain.
This exactly where the lord puts you.
So remind ourselves. We’re exactly where we should be.
Everything is exactly the way the Bible
describes it in a Nation under Judgment.
So that’s where we are.
The second question is who are we?
That answer is very explicit here as
well.
We are described in verse 15 as children of God
above reproach in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation
We also are described as lights in the world.
We are given two designations first we’re children of God this is a very
very clear separation from the crooked and perverse nation.
To see the the real foundation of Paul’s thinking. We need to go back to the
eighth chapter of John’s gospel. Where our Lord makes that familiar
distinction verse 42 of John 8.
“Jesus said unto them, If God were your Father, ye would love me: for I proceeded
forth and came from God; neither came I of myself, but he sent me.
To them if God were your father, these are the Jewish leaders who are saying
God is their father. Jesus say if God were your father. You would love me for
I proceeded forth and have come from God. For I have not come on my own
initiative but he sent me. Why do you not understand what I’m saying is it
because it is you cannot hear my word.
Why you are of your father the devil.
You want to do the desires of your father.
What do you expect people to do?
If they’re the children of the devil. To behave in a devilish way. Everything
is as you would expect it to be. He was a murderer. You say why are they murdering
babies because of the children of the devil? Who was a murderer from the beginning.
Why don’t they ever tell the truth? Cause they’re children of the devil.
The devil doesn’t stand in the truth. Because there’s no truth in him. Whenever
he speaks a lie. He speaks from his own nature. He’s a liar and the father of lies
so you expected them to tell you the truth? You expected them to be the people of
the truth? You expected them to be protectors of life? No No this culture under judgment.
These people really doesn’t care if babies are killed. They done care if old people die.
They do not care if people are untreated for a virus.
They die languishing without treatment because they simply reflect the nature of their father.
You’re not going to change them.
They are just not going to change that is a fact.
When you do speak the truth.
Jesus say because I speak the truth you do not believe me. Did you understand that?
Because I speak the truth you do not believe me. Here’s the issue they have no capacity to believe the truth.
They have no ability to believe the truth.
They’re blind by their own fallenness they are double-blind by satan.
Who has blinded the minds of those who do not believe lest the light of the gospel
should shine unto them.
There are multiple layers of blindness.
They cannot see and they cannot understand.
That’s Ephesians 4 they have no understanding.
They are cut off from the life of God.
They are defined by ignorance.
They are defined by hardheartedness.
They are defined by unbelief.
They are defined by chasing after every imaginable and unimaginable impurity
with greed.
Ephesians
Chapter 4:17-19 he says
17 This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not
as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind,
18 Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through
the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart:
19 Who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work
all uncleanness with greediness.
He who is of God hears the words of God. For this reason you do not hear them because
you’re not of God? Do you understand why it’s difficult to speak the truth to this generation?
They don’t have a capacity to understand it until they are regenerated and until they are brought
from the darkness to light. So until they are delivered from the
kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God’s.
Dear son They have no capacity for the truth to even
34:48
understand the truth at all.
Colossians 1:21-22
And you, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled
22 In the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in his sight:
So this is the condition of the world.
That we’re are under judgment Our Country is crooked and perverse and utterly
able to hear and believe the truth because their nature
is the nature of their father and it is murderous and it is deceptive.
We on the other hand are the children of God, but as many as received him, he gave the right to be called the
children of God.
John 1:12
Romans 8
Galatians 4 and Romans 8 says we’ve been adopted as sons.
Galatians 4
No longer a slave but a son and because we are the children of God
we know the truth.
We hear the truth.
We believe the truth
We love the truth
We live the truth
We fight for the truth
We proclaim the truth
First John 3:10 says by this the children of God and the children of
the devil are obvious.
Anyone who doesn’t practice righteousness is not of God nor
the one who doesn’t love his brother. Not only is there a difference in the
ability to receive the truth.
When you’re a child of God you can receive it.
But also necessarily and consequentially you live it.
You live it.
Probably the most common question
that I get is how do I know I’m a christian?
Sometimes people are trying to reach
back and remember whatever they felt
at some moment when they prayed a prayer or walked an aisle
felt an emotional attachment to Jesus.
They think their salvation is based on something that happened in the past.
No how do you know you’re a christian?
You know you’re a Christian when righteousness is the pattern of your
life you used to be a slave of sin now you’re a servant of righteousness,
Romans 6. it’s the transformation that is the evidence.
Where there’s no transformation. There’s no salvation faith without works is
dead.
That’s why you hear jesus say by their fruits you shall
know them. Good trees produce good fruit and bad trees produce bad fruit.
First John 3:1 says
See how great a love the father has bestowed on
us that we would be called children of God and such we are
for this reason.
Listen for this reason.
The world doesn’t know us because it doesn’t know him.
So understand this we are aliens in this world.
A world under judgment
A world that cannot know god. Has no desire to know God.
Has no faculty to accept the truth and
can’t understand who we are.
They sees us as an impediment to the freedom
of their transgressions.
Wants to get us out of the way so that nobody is questioning their sinfulness.
But we know we’re the children of God.
Why do we know that because
Romans 8:16
Says the spirit testifies with our spirit that we are the children of God.
How does the spirit testify to us?
Mot us whispering in our brain.
The Spirit testifies to us that we’re the children of God by producing in us
love, joy, peace, gentleness, goodness, faith,
meekness and self-control the fruit of the spirit.
That’s the attitude fruit of the Spirit that results in the action. Fruit
of the Spirit if you have some kind of religious action without religious attitude or spiritual action without
spiritual attitude that’s legalism.
Genuine Spirituality starts with the attitude the fruit of the Spirit.
Shows up in the behavior. So you know the spirit is testifying
that you belong to the Lord.
When your life is marked by the fruit of the spirit and the love of the truth.
Love of the Lord. The truth written and the truth incarnate.
So we are children of God. As such we are in complete alienation from the
world around us.
So we are exactly where God wants us to be.
We are exactly who he wants us to be.
We’re right in the exact place of his design.
Then he also says Paul does that.
We are lights in the world foster by the used of the sun and the moon and
the stars.
Believers shine as lights in the darkness.
He uses that little phrase among whom you appear as lights in the world.
You are literally shining as luminaries.
Daniel 12:3 when you lead other people to righteousness you shine as the stars in
Heaven.
Isaiah 49:6 says of the servant of the Lord. I will also make you a light of the
nations. So that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.
Jesus said I am the light of the world.
Paul said to the Corinthians that the Glory of God
shines in Jesus Christ the glory of the Gospel of
the nature of God shining through Jesus Christ.
Then when Christ is in us. We become lights in the world.
When we come around as lights the first thing we do is expose what the darkness of the deeds of darkness
in Matthew 5.
I know I’m throwing a lot of scripture at you but Matthew 5:14 says you are the light of the world.
A city set on a hill cannot be hidden so let your light shine before men in
such a way that they may see your good works and Glorify your Father who’s in Heaven.
“Only one life to live and soon is past
Only what’s done for Christ will last!”
Hoping to make the time I have left count for the glory of God.
Living in a Perverse World Part 3