Joshua and Judges: The doctrine of leadership part 65 - Essential qualities of leadership: The filling of the Spirit; worldly anesthetics; spirituality is productive.

Title: Joshua and Judges: The doctrine of leadership part 65 - Essential qualities of leadership: The filling of the Spirit; worldly anesthetics; spirituality is productive.

 

Announcements / opening prayer:  

 

 

Principle: The world and the worldly Christians turn to so-called worldly things because they discover in them an anesthetic to deaden the pain of an empty heart and life.

 

One example of an anesthetic is the use of television. It's no one's business what you do with your time and certainly it is not the church's. What you do is between you and God, but consider the following.

 

[Begin quote] Big Brother does not watch us, by his choice. We watch him, by ours. There is no need for wardens or gates or Ministries of Truth. When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; a culture-death is a clear possibility. — Professor Neil Postman

 

Watching television puts one in a brain state that makes it difficult to think critically, and it quiets and subdues a population.

 

Viewers are mesmerized by what TV-insiders call “technical events.” These, according to Levine, are “quick cuts, zoom-ins, zoom-outs, rolls, pans, animation, music, graphics, and voice-overs, all of which lure viewers to continue watching even though they have no interest in the content.

 

As television journalist Edward R. Murrow warned in a 1958 speech: We have currently a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information. Our mass media reflect this. But unless we get up off our fat surpluses and recognize that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse, and insulate us, then television and those who finance it, those who look at it, and those who work at it, may see a totally different picture too late.

 

There are multiple anesthetics in the world designed to deaden the pain of an empty heart and an empty life and many of them are not sin in themselves, but when they are used as a distraction from the pain of a life out of communion with God then the thing that would be innocent and even legitimately entertaining in one believer's life is evil in another believer's life.

 

If the leaders in God's churches do not teach from the word of God on how to get on in a life of true divine happiness without the need of worldly anesthetics, but at the same time without the self-righteous asceticism or neglecting all forms of entertainment, then the condition of the hearers will not be improved. The cure for an empty heart is not to remove the worldliness that has attempted to fill it, but to fill it with God's life so that there is no room for seeking fulfillment in anything else.

 

A believer is to enjoy worldly things of entertainment, culture, sports, etc. without making them an anesthetic for an empty life.

 

How misleading is the theory that to be spiritual one must abandon play, diversion and helpful entertainment or amusement. This false theory is a device of Satan to make the blessings of God look abhorrent to young people and mankind in general by perverting these blessings into a form of asceticism. It is Satan's lie to project God as being opposed to joy, liberty, and naturalness of expression in thought and in life. God doesn't want to take away your individuality and creativeness, but in fact wants to show you His will for it. Spirituality is not a pious pose. It is not only, "Thou shall not" but also and actually much more so, "Thou shall." It flings open the doors into the eternal blessedness, energies and resources of God. It is a serious thing to remove the element of relaxation and play from any life. God has provided that our joy shall be full. Yet we are disciplined through the Spirit (self-control) to not mix or overlap the times when we should work with the times when we are allowed to play.

 

Principle: Spirituality is productive. Spirituality is not the avoidance of sin so much as it is the outworking of the life that is Christ.

 

A dead leaf may hang on to a tree all winter, but with the heat of spring a new flow of sap begins to create a new bud at the point where the dead leaf has desperately hung all winter long. It is the new life that detaches the dead matter, for both cannot occupy the same spot on the tree. So it is with the believer. Walk by means of the Spirit and you will not carry out the desires of the flesh.

 

If you notice current events, it is the latest trend promoted by Satan for Americans to do nothing while they receive assistance. Idleness is the devil's playground. For people to not have to work, or risk, or strive in order to sustain a living or to build one is to have people idle. As with the Christian way of life so does life not only consist in what you don't do but also in what you do. A believer not walking by the Spirit is more easily tempted because he is not occupied to executing the plan of God. He is literally a sitting duck (or beaver if you like). A believer occupied with the Lord in purposing to produce fruit to glorify the Lord doesn't have as much time to be thinking about the flesh. A citizen working 40-50 hours a week in order to support himself or a family doesn't have time to get involved in alcoholism, drug addiction, or crime. Yet this is where Satan would like much of the population to be so that they are weak and dependent. He would like the other parts of the population that do not trend in this way to be self-righteous and arrogant, which is also weak and dependent in another style.

 

Instructing Timothy in dealing with young widows, that they were not to be supported by the church, but were to work:

 

1TI 5:13

And at the same time they also learn to be idle, as they go around from house to house; and not merely idle, but also gossips and busybodies, talking about things not proper to mention.

 

PRO 13:4

The soul of the sluggard craves and gets nothing,

But the soul of the diligent is made fat.

 

PRO 20:4

he sluggard does not plow after the autumn,

So he begs during the harvest and has nothing.

 

PRO 21:25

The desire of the sluggard puts him to death,

For his hands refuse to work;

 

PRO 22:13

The sluggard says, "There is a lion outside;

I shall be slain in the streets!"

 

PRO 26:14

As the door turns on its hinges,

So does the sluggard on his bed.

 

PRO 26:16

The sluggard is wiser in his own eyes

Than seven men who can give a discreet answer.

 

[Chafer] It is the Spirit's work to produce in the believer a life which is heavenly in character. This life cannot be copied or faked, yet it is commonly supposed that spirituality consists in struggling to observe a particular set of rules, or that it is an imitation of something heavenly. It is not an imitation but the impartation of divine power. It is not a set of rules but a rule of life set by a personal and intimate relationship with God. The written word reveals it but it is only by the Spirit within that it can be lived.

 

Our adequacy is from God alone.

 

2CO 3:1 Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, as some, letters of commendation to you or from you?

 

2CO 3:2 You are our letter, written in our hearts, known and read by all men;

 

2CO 3:3 being manifested that you are a letter of Christ, cared for by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of human hearts.

 

2CO 3:4 And such confidence we have through Christ toward God.

 

2CO 3:5 Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God,

 

2CO 3:6 who also made us adequate as servants of a new covenant, not of the letter, but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

 

ROM 7:6

But now we have been released from the Law, having died to that by which we were bound, so that we serve in newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of the letter.

 

We have gone from a servant of the house to a son in the house. The son still has commands to follow, but he follows them in the freedom that belongs to the position of a son.

 

The son and the slave would have similar lists under the category of "you shall not." But when it comes to the things in which they do, the slave has a list while the son has a freedom that actually demands more than the list. For instance, the Law says to give 10% while the NT son is to give as he purposes in his own heart. The Law has certain days in which certain things are to be done while the NT son is not to regard one day above another. The son is trained in the royal nobility of how to do and what to do and is given divine power from within by which to do, but he is not ever told to do such and such at a certain time, on a certain day. That, he has been given the freedom of a son to figure out for himself, and in our case, with the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

 

Yet many love rituals and fear freedom. Freedom means more personal responsibility and more personal investment.

 

GAL 5:1 It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject [entangled as in a net] again to a yoke of slavery [under the law].

 

 

The teaching is that Christ died on the Cross to give us the advantage of having this liberty or freedom. This liberty consists of the Christian's freedom from the law.

 

Under the law, the person has no more liberty than a child in its minority under a guardian. The child has no freedom of action nor right of self-determination.

 

He must move within a set of rules prescribed by his guardian. He is not old enough to act alone. He must always act under the restrictions of his guardian. So is it with the person under the law. Here were these Galatian Christians, free from the law, having been placed in the family of God as adult sons, indwelt by the Holy Spirit who would enable them to act out in their experience that maturity of Christian life in which they were placed, now putting on the straight-jacket of the law, cramping their experience, stultifying their actions, depriving themselves of the power of the Holy Spirit. They were like adults putting themselves under rules made for children.

 

Liberty here does not refer to the kind of life a person lives, but the method in which he lives it. The CA believer has many commands, but he sees their goodness and lives and executes them by means of the Spirit.

 

The Judaizers lived their lives by dependence upon self effort in an attempt to obey the law. The Galatian Christians had been living their lives in dependence upon the indwelling Holy Spirit. Their hearts had been occupied with the Lord Jesus, the details of their lives being guided by the ethics that emerged from the teaching of the apostles, both doctrinal and practical, in what is in essence the character of the person of Christ.

 

The Christian is to act intelligently, not just doing because a law forbids or commands, but because it is right, because it pleases the Lord, and because he loves Him.