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!!!

Tue 6.2 – Old Man, Old Self

Today’s Readings: Colossians 3.1-9; 2 Timothy 3.1-7;

When you read Colossians 3.8-9, what comes to your mind when you see that term “old man”? Are we supposed to find an Old Man like this guy, and so something to him? No, of course not. So, then what does God mean by “old man”? (ok ladies, you are going to have to work with me, this is just a biblical term – MAN – that speaks of the whole of the human…ok, not necessarily the male chromosome of our species.)

I think the best way to define something is to illustrate it. Oftentimes we can understand a concept very well, although we may not be able to verbalize it exactly as we want. Like if I asked you to explain “love”. You may know what love is, you may have experienced love, you may even be remembering the emotions that are so strongly attached to such a word as we talk about it, however…to put all of that into words, you may struggle.

THE OLD MAN?

So, let’s look at an example of a day in our lives when the OLD MAN was THE MAN in control of our lives. Check out Ephesians 2.3, now get that picture in your mind. What is God describing there? He’s describing that way of living that is TOTALLY YIELDED (Rom 6 – know, reckon, yield) to the ways, desires, and LUSTS of the FLESH. That’s pretty easy to identify with isn’t it? We have all been there, some more recently that we’d like to admit.

That is the OLD MAN, the OLD WAY, the OLD SELF, the PRE-CHRIST version of living that was totally captive to the desires inherited from the FIRST MAN – ADAM (Romans 5 is an in depth treatment of this subject if you’d like more information, maybe even compare that with 1 Corinthians 15 for a overall understanding). That man – the OLD MAN, who was in control when we were lost but now is dead (Romans 6.6) is what we are to “PUTT OFF”.(for more on the old man, just in case you are itchy about these kind of things like I am, see Ephesians 4.22; Galatians 2.20, 5.24, 6.14)

PUTT OFF?

I don’t know about you, but when I was in High School I was not very concerned with how my clothes looked in my closet. I would come in after school, in a hurry to scatter off to wherever my friends were going to be that night and would come into my room, throw off what I had on and grab some different shoes, maybe a hat and hoodie or something, and jet our the door. In the midst of the clothes-changing-frenzy that would take place in my room, little concern was given to hanging those clothes back up, or making sure they were color-separated for the laundry, or whatever… I just wanted to get off my cheesy “school clothes” and get on my comfortable weekend clothes, caring nothing about those I was throwing off my back…where ever they landed was fine by me…the bed, the floor, the chair, the stereo, the trash can, on top of my dog, whatever…I was in a hurry to get the good ones on.

Now, do you get the idea of PUTTING OFF from that story? It was simply that I was throwing those things OFF my body, casting them aside for the sake of PUTTING ON something better! When we are saved, and we realize that our RISEN LIFE is that NEW MAN Jesus Christ that we PUT ON, then there shouldn’t be any question in our minds that we are to PUTT OFF the OLD MAN who is ALREADY DEAD, CRUCIFIED WITH HIM, and HOLDING US BACK from living in the reality of who we are IN HEAVENLY PLACES via the NEW MAN.

God says, take that OLD MAN and PUT HIM OFF, rip that junk off your body, throw it to the ground, and never give it a second thought…don’t even take the time to hang that mess back up in your closet…it’s dirty…it’s tainted…it’s worldly…it’s opposing God…and YOU – a NEW MAN IN CHRIST JESUS should never wear those NASTY OLD GARMENTS of the OLD MAN!May God help us to realize this truth today, may you PUT OFF the old man today, and may all his ways and wills go right along with him!

Mon 6.1 – undressing

Today’s Readings: Colossians 3.7-9; Ephesians 4.17-32

Yesterday was a huge day of the year for Christians. It is the day we celebrate the resurrection of our Lord from the dead! What a great time we had in our gatherings yesterday. I believe many people were able to clearly hear a presentation of the Gospel and respond and THAT is bringing great GLORY to our RESURRECTED Lord.

In Sunday school we talked about how fitting it is this study in Colossians to fall during Easter. As we have been talking about MORTIFYING OUR FLESH, we were able to see how CHRIST LITERALLY MORTIFIED HIS FLESH on the cross. By looking at His example of dying, we are able to more fully understand Paul’s words in I Cor 15.31 where he says “I die daily.”

Now, as Sunday has come and gone and we have all been reminded of the GLORIOUS TRUTH of the RESURRECTION of Christ…and we have seen from last weeks devotions how He left us the example for MORTIFYING… let me draw your attention to another verse from our passage today…look back at Colossians 3.1, remind yourself of what this verse teaches is true about the believer, where there ARE currently wit Christ. The verse says we are RISEN WITH HIM. Risen where? When? How? The answer to all of those questions is in what we have just celebrated. We are risen to HEAVENLY places WITH Him, right now as we speak. So, now that we have that nailed down, the whole next progression of Colossians is to develop what should be different about our lives because of that truth.

We have talked about the things we spend our lives chasing after (seeking).We have talked about the things we spend our lives loving, and having a passion for (setting our affection).

We have talked about the need to kill the members (bodies) that we have on this earth to keep from seeking the things of this earth (mortify).

Today, let’s remind ourselves that if we are truly born again…truly risen…truly a child of God, there are things that should be different! We talked about the illustration yesterday in Sunday School about a McDonald’s employee coming to work dressed as a Chick-fil-a employee…how crazy would that be? You would probably lose your job pretty quickly. However, while we would all agree that showing up for work dressed like one of their greatest competitors would be a huge slap in the face to your company…so is living life as a Christian but being DRESSED in a lifestyle that is according to the OLD MAN who was crucified with Christ that the NEW MAN may live with Him…now…in heaven…resurrected.

Paul says we used to LIVE IN OUR MEMBERS ON THIS EARTH (Colossians 3.7) and when we did, we obeyed them, we were slaved to them…but now that we have that SAME POWER that raised Christ from the dead, RAISING US to be with Him, we also have the SAME POWER to mortify, or kill those, members(bodies) on the earth! As we move into this next thought from Colossians, we see God say to PUT OFF the things of those members. In Colossians 3.8-9 he gives a whole list of things that CHARACTERIZED those members we used to live according to. Look at those things…those are the kinds of things that come when we completely yield to the MEMBERS on the earth – those are some of the THIGNS OF EARTH we no longer live unto.Once that body is MORTIFIED, it is just dead weight. It’s like a huge, heavy, winter coat in the middle of the summer. It’s just hot, heavy, stinky, and limits how freely you can move around. So, why let it remain over you…just PUT IT OFF! That’s what Paul’s saying…once it’s dead, it’s just dead weight, so put it off (UNDRESS FROM THE FLESHY NATURE YOU USED TO LIVE UNTO) and now, live unto God!