Protecting the doctrine you have accumulated, John 14:21John 14:21 "He who has My commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves Me; and he who loves Me shall be loved by My Father, and I will love him, and will disclose Myself to him." / “keeps” – terew [tereo] – to guard what belongs to you and is precious to you. “commandments” = categorical doctrines. \ /You guard doctrine by guarding your positive volition. You guard your positive volition by avoiding the many distractions in life. \ In order to maintain the doctrine I have and to keep it circulating in my soul I’ve got to continue to take in doctrine on a daily basis. Yet there are many distractions to prevent a believer from developing this habit and other distractions designed to undo that habit. John 12:42 Nevertheless many even of the rulers believed in Him, but because of the Pharisees they were not confessing Him, lest they should be put out of the synagogue; John 12:43 for they loved the approval of men rather than the approval of God. One great distraction, which goes directly against the indwelling of Christ, is people emphasis over God emphasis. /A distraction is a thought that invades the soul and causes a change in priorities.\ Every person has priorities. There is TLJC and then there is everything else. Nothing is impure or unclean so long as it is in its right place. /Luke 9:59 And He said to another, "Follow Me." But he said, "Permit me first to go and bury my father."\ /Luke 9:61 And another also said, "I will follow You, Lord; but first permit me to say good-bye to those at home." \ Rev 2:2 I know your deeds and your toil and perseverance, and that you cannot endure evil men, and you put to the test those who call themselves apostles, and they are not, and you found them to be false; Rev 2:3 and you have perseverance and have endured for My name's sake, and have not grown weary. /Rev 2:4 But I have this against you, that you have left your first love. \ /If a distraction invades the believer’s soul and causes something else to dethrone Christ as #1 priority then it is a failure of the believer to apply PSD#5 – doctrinal orientation.\ 2 Cor 10:3 For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, 2 Cor 10:4 for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. 2 Cor 10:5 We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, Every thought must become captive to the authority of the mind of Christ if you are to guard your doctrine for the rest of your life. We noted undeserved suffering and how motivation is needed to keep going and not quit and that motivation was “Christ in you your hope of glory.” Undeserved suffering will not occur until you have reached SSE and then you must transform from knowing your destiny to becoming your destiny. The plan of God was not designed for you to reach SSE and then turn back and quit. /Luke 9:62 But Jesus said to him [the one who wanted to go home and say good-bye], "No one, after putting his hand to the plow and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God." \ After 10 of the 12 spies gave a bad report about the giants in the promised land [yes you are going to have to take it by fighting]: /Num 14:3 "And why is the LORD bringing us into this land, to fall by the sword? Our wives and our little ones will become plunder; would it not be better for us to return to Egypt?" \ In choosing security over freedom you settle for an environment that the temple of God should not exist in. Freedom always requires war because there is always an evil that schemes to remove freedom from the people of God. Your war is in your soul. There is always an evil that desires to dethrone TLJC from preeminence in your soul and that evil is not so stupid as to often make frontal assaults, often the evil is very subtle in the form of distraction. /Doctrine always puts Christ first since in truth He is the pre-eminent One, the King of kings, and the unique celebrity of the universe. If Christ is first then His word is first.\ Col 1:15 And He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation. Col 1:16 For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities — all things have been created by Him and for Him. Col 1:17 And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. Col 1:18 He is also head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the first-born from the dead; so that He Himself might come to have first place in everything. Col 1:19 For it was the Father's good pleasure for all the fulness to dwell in Him, Col 1:20 and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross; through Him, I say, whether things on earth or things in heaven. These distractions have been designed by the ruler of the cosmic system to weaken believers by dethroning Christ in their hearts. I need to see them as distractions and so I need a red alert system. What is a red alert system? /A red alert system is a mental awareness from doctrinal orientation that a system of thinking has falsehood within it.\ A list of popular distractions will hone your red alert system. Radar is a signal that is beamed out from a source. If a radar signal hits a target it will bounce off the target and return back to the source showing if there are any unfriendlies. However, with stealth technology some aircraft can avoid being detected. In the spiritual life satan is constantly improving his stealth technology, but the radar of doctrinal orientation will find the slightest falsehood in an idea that /1.Lack of SSE causing hypersensitivity and subjectivity. Everything is about you. Fear of the perception of others.\ /2.The lie that defence mechanisms really work.\ /3.The lie that you can receive approbation from God, which results in legalism.\ /4.Christian service is the spiritual life. It is spirituality.\ You need to be equipped for the work of service. Any Christian service is a result of spirituality and never the means. Anyone who says that you need to be doing more for God is involved in a subtle system of evil. /5.Christianity allows me to neglect my responsibilities in life; marriage, business, home, etc.\ /1 Tim 5:8 But if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith, and is worse than an unbeliever. \ /6.I should never have any down time when I can just relax, take a vacation, enjoy the pleasures of secular life.\ This is the crowd that think drinking alcohol in moderation is sin, which it is not. There is to be no dancing, no movies, no television, no books of a certain nature, no vacations, no down time, no naps. Can these things become evil? Of course they can, anything can become evil. Evil is simply the absence of the pre-eminence of Christ in your soul. /Rom 14:14 I know and am convinced in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself; but to him who thinks anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean. \ /1 Tim 4:4 For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected, if it is received with gratitude; \ No substance is evil in and of itself. Evil is a system of thinking which seeks to pervert a substance or object independent of God’s natural laws and spiritual commands. /7.Because the plan of God is based on grace He approves of a hedonistic lifestyle. Hedonism = the pursuit of pleasure is the ultimate good.\ From the Greek word for delight hedonism is a system of thought that the pursuit of one pleasure after another is the ultimate goal in life. /8.Christian fellowship is spirituality. \ /9.Succumbing to the lust pattern of the sin nature: power lust, approbation lust, inordinate ambition and competition, monetary lust, sexual lust, pleasure lust, revenge lust, crusader lust, social lust, chemical lust, and criminal lust.\ /10.The cosmic system is not based in evil.\ This does not mean that you are to go live on a mountain in the wilderness. The cosmic system is not a location but a system of rationale. There is never a time where it is ok to grieve or quench the HS. /11.The emotional sins of guilt, self-pity, hatred, and fear are justified at times. \ The cosmic system suggests that these sins may be justified at times, but they never are – name and cite them always. /12.Involvement in temporary spiritual gifts - prophesy, miracles, healing, tongues, interpretation of tongues, discerning spirits, and apostleship.\ This has become a major distraction in Christianity because of the spectacular nature of these gifts. People like them because they desire to draw attention to themselves. None of them have existed since the end of the first century. [Destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD and completion of the Bible in ~ 100 AD] /1 Cor 14:4 One who speaks in a tongue edifies himself; but one who prophesies edifies the church. \ Prophecy was a temporary spiritual gift given for communication of doctrine that had not yet been recorded in writing. That’s why prophecy in the first century, edified the church while tongues did not. Either way, both are temporary. /1 Cor 13:8 Love never fails; but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away. \ /13.Social distraction. Social life more important than doctrine. Social media distractions. 24 hour cable news.\ If you put Bible doctrine first, you will organize your own social life and use of social media at your own level and capacity, and in your own time. /14.Marital distractions. Professional distractions of gaining wealth and promotion. Distractions from an unorganized life. \ /15.Unrealistic expectations of yourself and others. Role model arrogance. Inability to handle rejection. \ /16.Rejection of authority. Failure to recognize the privacy of others.\ /17.Political distractions. Social status. Racial distractions – racism and anti-Semitism. \ /18.Emotionalism. Emotional response is the measure of success.\ /19.Fear of death.\ /Heb 2:14-15 that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil; and might deliver those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives. \ /20.Ducks vs. Beavers! \ |