Fri 6.5 - Self Illustrated, part 2

Today’s Readings: Colossians 3.5-9; Judges 1-2

Yesterday we went over Part 1 of this devotion, please make sure to reference it again before completing today’s in order to understand it properly…

LASTLY, FOR THE ILLUSTRATION ITSELF…

• Check out Judges 1.21-36. What is happening there is the Children of Israel do what seems to be the “Christian” thing to do. Rather than killing everyone, they show MERCY – God is a God of Mercy right??? So surely this was the RIGHT thing for them to do, it may have even felt RIGHT. However, What they were doing was MAKING A DEAL WITH THE ENEMY OF GOD. When they didn’t completely kill all of God’s enemies, they were disobeying! They were YIELDING to the very enemy of GOD (Romans 6.12-13)!!!
• Now, remember what it was that happens is NOT that they went out and joined up with the enemy of God. They didn’t change uniforms, join the other army, or strip the Israelite crest off of their battle gear…they simply allowed the inhabitants to beg for mercy, and made a deal with them – and that SIMPLE LITTLE MOVE cost them for GENERATIONS AND GENERATIONS TO THIS VERY DAY!
• It is interesting the reasoning behind their allowing them to live…that which represented the flesh (the inhabitants of the land) were allowed to remain in the land, and live, because the Israelites made two mistakes… (look at Judges 1.22)
  • THEY THOUGHT THEY WERE STRONG ENOUGH TO HANDLE IT. When we are having a spiritual growth spurt, we are likely to get big-headed about how much we can handle. When we used to run from the very presence of a dirty movie, now we think to ourselves, well, I can handle this…and we watch… allowing those inhabitants to remain….wow, how DECEITFUL ARE THOSE LUSTS!
  • THEY PUT THE INHABITANTS TO TRIBUTE. They took that which represented the FLESH and put it in tribute to THEIR FLESH. They were not letting these people remain alive because they wanted to be “good” folks, it was because they wanted to be wealthy folks. They wanted the TRIBUTE money – In scripture, that basically means they became the indentured servants of the children of Israel…they would work and the Israelites would get all of the income in exchange for not killing them.
• Please hear this – we do the same thing!!!! We will see some part of our flesh, and see the “good” that it can do, and we make a deal to allow it to remain so that we can put that part of us into TRIBUTE to please our flesh. We may know that cutting people down at the lunch table is wrong…but we see that it brings us popularity…comfort…social acceptance…so rather than kill it, we make a deal with it, we will let it remain, as long as it is benefiting us somehow…and we may even do it in some new SPIRITUALIZED way…like adding a phrase “bless his heart” or “I’m just kidding” after each SLANDEROUS AND HURTFUL REMARK. That’s how we are.
• This danger is not simply that we would use things of our flesh to our own benefit, but also that we would use them in the service of God. You better believe those Israelites excused their behavior because these servants were giving them the money, supplies, and resources they needed to build the temple of God. BUT, Never loose sight of the fact that God said He ABHORRED those things because of where they came from! – GOD NEVER HAS AND NEVER WILL WANT ANYTHING TO DO WITH OUR FLESH! ESPECIALLY IF WE ARE TRYING TO USE IT IN SERVICE TO HIM!!!!

Oh God, please forgive me for all the times I have approached worshipping you through the flesh. I am so remorseful for every time that I have brought you offerings of my flesh and not of my own death so that your Spirit may live in me. Lord Jesus, I ask you today to strengthen me to mortify my flesh that You may life in me. I realize that I cannot make any deals with this flesh, I cannot allow it to keep any ground, or show it any mercy because it will draw me away from you every time. God, I yearn for you today, may you be alive in and through me today in a new way, fully, wholly, completely yours today! Amen.

Thu 6.4 – Self Illustrated

Today’s Readings: Colossians 3.5-9; Judges 1-2

I want to take up our Devotions today right where we left off last night. We were crunched for time, so I just want to take time to expound on what God was teaching us in the ILLUSTRATION about the Flesh from the story of the Children of Israel in Judges. (guys, I can’t encourage you strongly enough to check out the verse references to understand the strength of these passages of scripture as we spend time in the Word today.)

A COUPLE THINGS YOU NEED TO KEEP IN MIND FOR THIS…

• Don’t forget that the land of Cannan (the promised land) is a picture of the Abundant Christian Life. We see that by comparing Exo 3.8 & John 10.10 – God did not bring the children of Israel out of Egypt just to bring them out…it was to bring then INTO the promised land, where He was going to dwell with them! In the same way God didn’t bring us out of the bondage of Sin and the World (Egypt) just to save us, but to bring us INTO an ABUNDANT LIFE in the place where He wants to DWELL WITH US!
• Don’t forget that the ENEMY OF GOD in this situation is the inhabitants of the land, those who currently control the ground where God wants to dwell with His people. This is a picture of how our FLESH is currently on the throne of our lives (Eph 4.22) and is thus the enemy of God (Gal 5.17), and the earthly ways of the flesh are what we will have to battle as the Israelites had to battle those who were already dwelling in the land of God.

NOW FOR THE BACKGROUND OF THE ILLUSTRATION…

• We noticed last night in Exo 23.27-32 that God said NOT to allow anyone to remain alive when they come into the promised land. He said for the children of God to DESTROY everyone when they get in there.
  • The same principal is true as we conquer this ground (our bodies – 2 Cor 5.1 & Gen 2.7), we must COMPLETELY DESTROY all of it’s NATURAL inhabitants – that is LUSTS! (Eph 2.3)
• Then, we saw that in Deut 7.1-10, God specifically repeats the instruction RIGHT BEFORE THEY BEGIN TO TAKE OVER THE PROMISED LAND, and in this passage He specifically says to SHOW NO MERCY to the inhabitants. People would surely be begging for their lives, trying to make deals with the Israelites and bargaining with them for survival.
  • Again, the principal repeats itself with the life of the believer – as we begin to realize and live in the PUTTING OFF of our flesh, and we begin to KILL it (MORTIFY OUR MEMBERS)what is going to happen is that our members are going to BEG, PLEAD, BARGAIN, and try to make DEALS with our Spiritual self in order to SURVIVE! And THAT is NOT what God said to do with the inhabitants of the LAND! This is where we run the risk of becoming PARTIALLY OBEDIENT, and thus DISOBEDIENT.
• And Lastly we saw from Psalm 106.34-40 that God said He ABHORRED the people who disobeyed His command, and did not completely wipe out the inhabitants of the land (our flesh).
  • Now, the reason for such strong language is because when they allowed the inhabitants of the land to remain, those inhabitants kept their false Gods with them…then they eventually bled those false systems of worship into the TRUE WORSHIP of THE TRUE GOD and thus led God’s people AWAY from HIM – Those inhabitants used DIECETFUL LUSTS to draw God’s people away from HIM, the very One who SAVED them out of EGYPT (SIN) to BE WITH HIM!!! No wonder he ABHORRED it. (I encourage you to look that word up on dictionary.com if you are not familiar with it’s meaning…and remember this is GOD who feels this way!!! WOW – so humbling.)

Spend some time dwelling on that today…then tomorrow we will pick up right here and keep going. So, tomorrow you will need to reference back to today’s devotion so that some of the things will make sense…

Pray that God will open your eyes to see wondrous things today from His Word (Ps 119.18), that He will give you strength and power to completely mortify your flesh as you go throughout this day! And I’ll see you here, tomorrow.

Wed 6.3 – iFlesh

Today’s Readings: Colossians 3.1-9; Judges 1.21-36, 2.6-13

Today I want to stop and talk about a simple truth from our familiar passage in Colossians, and compare that to an illustration the Lord gives to us in Joshua.

Have you ever seen the Apple Software series that all start with “i-Whatever the software is for”? Like, iTunes, iWork, iLife, etc…? That is a great marketing strategy for their software. Without actually coming out and saying it, they are personalizing their product to the consumer. Their branding is one of the most successful of all time because of their ability to present it in such a “our way is better” model. This is even subtly seen in their “PC and MAC” commercials with the dorky PC guy in glasses and a suit from the 80’s, and the hip MAC guy.

Unfortunately we seem to take that same approach with our FLESH! We look at the scriptures, and we hear God saying to MORTIFY that flesh, and to PUT OFF that same wicked flesh, so that we can PUT ON the new man (Col 3.1-9). However, what we begin to do, almost instantly, is to excuse us keeping our flesh around. Too often we try to make it sound spiritual. We will let our flesh remain UN-MORTIFIED, and not completely PUT IT OFF because it can HELP us in the work of God.

Here’s an example of what I mean. Have you ever looked at someone and thought to yourself, “man, if that guy would just give his life to Christ, he has so much potential.”? Well, the BASE problem with that kind of thinking is that we are immediately connecting his USEFULNESS to God with his FLESHY ABILITIEIS. The last time I checked, God was in the business of taking that which was NOT FLESH, and making it useful in spite of the flesh so that the whole world knows this thing must be of God (see 1 Corinthians 1.27).

So, what we do is see some part of us that may even LOOK like it is potentially good for the work of God, and we let that one part of our flesh remain alive, remain on, and we just try to take that FLESH as a PRISONER OF WAR to our Spirit…which will never work.

We have no leg to stand on in our passage in Colossians if we think God was saying that we could keep some of the flesh alive and around…absolutely not. Look at an illustration of this in the Old Testament.

As the Children of Israel were delivered from Egypt (Salvation) and were led through the wilderness by Moses (law) to the Promised Land of God, they encountered many things and failed many times. Then God raises a new generation of Israelites to possess THE LAND (abundant spiritual life, John 10.10) under the new leader Joshua (Jesus). When they get there, God says to COMPLETELY wipe out everyone that is in the land (just as we are to completely mortify/kill/destroy our flesh before we can possess abundant life) and just like so many of us, they DISOBEY.

Rather than simply obeying God, they decided that these people who they were to kill could be kept alive as slaves and pay them tribute (or money) and be a profit to them. While this system worked for a generation, check out the commentary in Judges 1 and 2 as noted above. Because they kept those people around, those HEATHEN PEOPLE exposed God’s people to HEATHEN WORSHIP and HEATHEN GODS which eventually led the CHILDREN OF GOD away from the ONE TRUE GOD unto another. If they had simply OBEYED God in the beginning the sad, sad, sad, commentary of Judges 2.11-13 would not be the case because the enemy would not have been there to present the false gods.

Today, let’s ask God to show us areas of our lives where we are allowing FLESH to remain because we think it benefits us, and maybe even Him. No matter how impressive your flesh may be, God wants nothing to do with it. He wants no sacrifice of it, no worship from it, no things concerning it, because “God IS a SPIRIT and they that worship Him MUST worship Him in SPIRIT and truth.” May we completely destroy and put off that wicked flesh that tempts us so!!!

Fri 5.5 – Jesus taught us how to deal with it…

Today’s Readings: Colossians 1.16-22, 2.12-14, 3.1-7;

As you know, Sunday is the Christian celebration of “Easter”. Although Christ actually died at the Passover, because of pagan celebrations and worldly influences through history, Christians adopted the name to compete with festivals for false God’s. (I don’t even know why I put that out there…guess I just thought you’d want to know?) Anyway, since Easter is coming in two days, I wanted to take a new approach to the thoughts we’ve been looking at in Colossians by looking at them through the window of the MORTIFICATION OF CHRIST. While we have talked about MORTIFYING our FLESH, and making that a spiritual principal, Christ ACUTALLY mortified His flesh. However, many of the same principals applied. That FLESH (the human body of Christ) had to be mortified before the SPIRIT (the Holy Spirit of God) could reign in life (by indwelling the believer, see John 16.7 ).

So, here’s how today is going to work…get our your Bible, get out a pad of paper, click here, and here, for some awesome background music, and prayerfully consider these passages. We know how our FLESH lusteth against the SPIRIT (Gal 5.17), so let’s consider the ultimate battle between ALL FLESH and the SPIRIT HIMSELF as Christ was suffering on that cross…as he bled…as he groaned (Rom 8.23)…as he was mortified… and consider these verses…

Philippians 2.5-8

• Imagine the power it took for CHRIST JESUS the LORD to be on that CROSS!
• How should that invade and influence our MINDS?
• What did the cross signify in Christ’s life? (specifically v.

Hebrews 12.2-4

• Consider the HUGE statement that Jesus Christ is the AUTHOR and FINISHER of OUR faith!
• What made Him mortify that flesh?
• How are we to gain strength from meditating upon His death for us, and how far He was willing to go?

Ephesians 2.14-17

• What has been removed between God and us?
• We were at ENMITY (absolutely against) God, what did Christ do to remove that from us?
• What was the instrument Christ used to RECONCILE us (or bring us back) to God? And what did that tool do to the ENMITY?
• Because of Christ’s work, now we no longer have ENMITY between God and us, but rather we have something amazing, undeserved, and unreachable without Christ…what is it?

Before you leave your time with God today, spend time thanking Him…because He mortified, we can mortify…because He died, we can die…because He suffered, we can have peace…it is truly, NOTHING BUT THE BLOOD, and I pray we will YEARN for Him more today because we realize that more and more!

Wed 5.3 – A very old bag of tricks

Today’s Readings: Colossians 3.1-7; I John 2.16; Joshua 7.21; Gen 3.6

Alright, today I want to step back from where we’ve been focusing in Colossians 3 and look at a little bigger picture of the scripture as a whole. Let’s talk about some of the facts first as we prepare our hearts for the message tonight. I am going to make some simple points for us to consider then at the end of that list, I will challenge us to do something with what this list teaches us…

1 – The Devil is NOT omnipresent(always everywhere), omnipotent(all powerful), or omniscient(all knowing) – those are things that ONLY belong to GOD!

2 – however, the devil sure has been around for a long time! When a human, that only lives for 70-80 years looks at the devil, he may appear to be these things because of his age and the knowledge of humans he would have gained over that time. Who would know more about ants…a 3^rd grader who burns them with a magnifying glass in his driveway, or a 60 year old scientist who dedicated his life to the study of ants? The same is true of the Devil…he has had 6000 years to learn human weaknesses and frailties, and he knows how to use them to his advantage.

3 – In Colossians 3, we are NOT to SEEK or SET our AFFECTION on the things of where?…EARTH! And what were those things? We said they were things that are motivated by this WORLD, and things motivated by our BODIES. Another fair way of saying “things of earth” would be to say “things of the WORLD” wouldn’t you say? Ok, not carry that into the next question…

4 – In 1 John 2.16 how does God describe the WORLDLY things??? He says “ALL that is IN the WORLD is …” and then gives three categories the THINGS OF THE WORLD can be categorized into, which are –

• Lusts of the flesh
• Lusts of the eyes
• Pride of life

5 – We can go to Genesis 3.6 and see that SATAN obviously knew that when he tempted Eve with the THINGS OF THE EARTH/WORLD in the garden. Notice the progression of Eve’s sin:

• She “SAW that the tree was GOOD FOR FOOD” (lusts of the flesh)
• She decided “it was PLEASANT to the EYES” (lust of the eyes)
• She even thought it was “a tree to be DESIRED to make one WISE” (pride of life)

Eve fell BECAUSE SHE WAS SEEKING AND SETTING HER AFFECTION ON THE THINGS OF EARTH (WORLD) AND NOT ABOVE!!!!! WOW!

6 – Now, we go to Joshua 7.21 and see the same patter is what caused the fall of Achan:

• He “SAW among the SPOILS” of a worldly city that was the enemy of God things that even after he is busted he still considers “goodly” (lust of the eyes)
• He “coveted” those things (lust of the flesh) [Hey! Right here, remember what we talked about last Wednesday about Colossians 3.5 – "covetousness, which is idolatry"!!!]
• He “took” those things God had specifically claimed for Himself! [see Joshua 6.18] (pride of life)

Ending our time with God today, let’s re-read Colossians 3.1-7 and ask God to keep our hearts and minds SET on HIM and the THINGS ABOVE where HE is and where WE are IN Christ. May we not be caught up in the sin that Satan IS going to tempt us by, the same sin he’s always tempted man by, because he knows it WORKS! Even in Colossians 3.5 God warns about the outcome of the lust of the flesh – “fornication”; the lust of the eyes – “inordinate affection, evil concupiscence”; and the pride of life – “covetousness, which is idolatry” !!!

I love you guys! Today, maybe more than ever I am praying for you to STAY AWAY from the SINS Satan uses to snare so many people. I see SIN everywhere I look today, from our media, to our music, to our attitudes, to our character, to our faithlessness, to our apathy and laziness, and I want it to change! I want a generation of CHANGERS. Today, as we prepare to come to the FRIDGE for service tonight, let’s focus our minds NOT on GOING TO CHURCH, but rather on BEING THE CHURCH! Maybe if we thought more like that we wouldn’t struggle as much elsewhere…