Watch and Pray Series #5 – Vain Belief
We’re going to begin in 1 Thessalonians chapter 2. As we begin let’s go to the Lord in prayer.
Come thou fount of every blessing, help us sing Thy praise to Thee. Lord we are here this morning only because of Your mercy, only because of Your grace, only because Lord You have worked in us that good thing and You have stirred us up in our heart and You have given us of Your love and You redeemed us and YOu made us happy and whole Lord in You. We are full and we are grateful Lord for the goodness that You’ve shown us and we thank You for the command that You’ve given us to gather together even so much the more as we see the Day approaching that we might come together and consider one another and exhort one another Lord to love and good works. We thank You for the heritage and the history of so many years where Your people have risen up in the day in which they lived and they’ve served You Lord, they’ve sought after Your heart, they’ve hungered after Your purpose and You’ve blessed Your people Lord throughout the years and even today in this great land we know a liberty and a freedom to assemble because of the sincerity and the blood of the saints, so many yearts and centuries gone by behind us. And Lord today we live in a land that is no longer careful for Your ways, no longer full of zeal for walking in righteousness. Lord it is as if we are but a small remnant. Certainly Lord You know how many, but I ask that You would be merciful to us and stir up in us Lord a faithfulness, a sincerity of faith, Lord a willingness to spend and be spent for that which You have laid a hold of us Lord in Jesus Christ. Now this morning as we open Your Word and share together Lord, I ask that You would meet us here and that You would make Your Word very dear to us, very real, that we would be strengthened and challenged and that we would be useful for Your good work today in the land that we live in. And we thank You and we pray in Christ’s name, amen.
I have to confess that I can’t fathom stories like that that you shared Jay about Isaac Watts and all the aspects of his training, a child age seven being as gifted and not just gifted, the heart for the Lord, a sincerity in Christ. (Jay – “He went to a good school.”) He went to a very good school obviously. I kind of guess you’re implying something there. The school of Christ is a great school.
This morning I had wanted to continue reading in 1 Thessalonians and I may get a little bit sidetracked in terms of the whole reading because of I wanted to find the answer to a question that’s, it hasn’t been plaguing me but it’s sort of been like this burr in your saddle that’s always kind of irritating and wish you could put it to rest and understand what the Lord’s speaking. So I’m going to address that particular issue beginning with the context. And just by way of picking up in chapter 2 of 1 Thessalonians where we were reading last week, it says in verse 1, “For you yourselves brethren know our entrance unto you that is was not in vain.” And perhaps most of my comments this morning are going to center around that word “vain” and “vanity” as we understand a little bit more of the nature of the Gospel and the fruit of the Gospel working in our lives. As we take just a brief snapshot here of 1 Thessalonians 2, Paul goes on to describe what was not in vain in terms of his entrance, his ministry unto the Thessalonians and he said first of all, “We had suffered before and were shamefully entreated as you know at Philipi,” and you may remember the account of the Philippian jailor and that was they came literally directly from jail in Philipi and ended up in Thessalonica. So the sincerity of the purpose of their message cast against the backdrop of persecution. And one of the comments I want to make simply by way of reference is this, whenever Paul talks about vanity as it relates to our faith, he usually associates it with some form of persecution. And I think I understand why because that which is vain is that which pleases the flesh, but that which is of the Spirit does not please the flesh. So that contest is always set in motion, that contest is always if you please an agitation and that which is vain always pleases the flesh and that which is not vain always finds itself locked in contest with some form of persecution, some form of distress. So we see here Paul is using this little pattern from his own testimony, “I didn’t come to you in vanity, rather I came under diress, I came under persecution of the very message that I was bringing to you,” and then he went on to say, “we were bold in our God to speak unto you the Gospel of God with much contention.” So here he is in the new setting boldly preaching the Word of God with or in the presence of much contention. By way of historical reference just briefly pointing out, Paul apparently stayed in Thessalonica somewhere in the neighborhood of three to three and a half weeks or so. It was in the time frame after the third sabbath, the Thessalonicans, the Jews from Thessalonica, the rabble-rousing Jews, they came down from Philipi to Thessalonica and the brethren quickly sent Paul and Silas away. So when you look at verse three and you’re thinking of that concept of vain and purification of vanity that is through persecution, he says, “Our exhortation was not of deceit or uncleanness nor in guile but as we were allowed of God to be put in trust of the Gospel, even so we speak, not pleasing men but God which trieth the hearts.” I hope to come back and continue reading this in the context because the greater focus of the message that I hope to get to is in chapter 4 and hopefully we’ll get that in a Sunday or so. But as I’ve done some meditation of the idea of vanity and vain, I want to just spend a few minutes. There’s quite a bit of Scriptural teaching in the New Testament epistles from Paul that give us some insights and I think I’m going to start with my conclusion so you’ll know where I’m going.
In some of the passages Paul talks about the believers believing in vain. Some of the passages Paul talks about having run in vain. There’s frequent uses of the word vain in the New Testament. But when you run across one the passages about believing in vain, it strikes in your heart a question, “Well is it possible to believe and then have it be for nothing? Have it be for vanity, to have a vain end, it’s of no value?” And it works out that even though you believed, it did you no good. In other words it kind of raises the question, “Can I be saved and be confident in my salvation, or do I have to maintain some form of spiritual edge so to speak in terms of my salvation by which I never have security that the work of Christ is complete on my behalf?” There are many many groups of Christians out there who teach that you can lose your salvation. It’s a real common teaching among a wide group of believers. I don’t have time historically to go through and touch on who the groups are and what they teach and why particularly, but generally speaking it’s my personal observation and let me underscore the word “personal observation,” but it’s my personal observation that when I listen to those teaching about that you can lose your salvation, when I listen to them teaching that doctrine, I sense that they’re attempting to honor the Word in places that it speaks “believe in vain,” as if you can believe in vain and then lose your salvation and find yourself lost. There’s at least a touch of genuine sincerity in trying to conform to the Word of God that these people are feeling called upon to hold up what they would say is sound teaching, but I think it’s very important for us to understand just how incredible that the Word of God is as it speaks on these subjects so that we have a stable faith. The primary problem with having a doctrine about losing your salvation, the primary problem with the whole doctrine is that it defiles the cross of Christ. It defiles the finished work of Jesus Christ and it puts upon your plate the finishing touch of whether or not you’re going to be saved. So it transfers to the human agency that final essence of whether or not I’m going to be saved. So you have to have some form of strength of your own fit and yet we find clearly teachings, for example, Christ taught on the last days in Matthew 24, He spoke plainly that in the last days there would be terrible persecution and tribulation and He said, “If it were possible it would cause even the elect to lose their salvation,” but there’s that little phrase, “if it were possible.” There is something that God does in us, “faithful is He who calls you who will also do it.” There is that which we’re trusting God for that no one else can do for us and if we cannot trust God to do and complete that which He has offered to us then we have no hope. And so I think it’s essential for us to take a look at the word “vanity” as it is taught really by Paul in the epistles. I’m going to be jumping through several epistles and if you want to follow, I’ll be rattling out the verses, we’re going to begin in Romans 1:21. If you want to follow along I’ll rattle the verses off and we’re going to kind of go sequentially through the epistles in order touching on the issues.
Let’s start with Romans 1:21, and let’s pick it up at that first instruction of vanity where it says, “Because that when they knew God they glorified Him not as God and neither were thankful but became vain in their imaginations and their foolish heart was darkened.” In my personal opinion, that verse is the crux of understanding of almost all the New Testament as it relates to our need for salvation and the means by which man’s mind is darkened and the means by which man’s mind is enlightened. There is a primary relationship to God that is on the table for every man to deal with. And every man and woman born into the world has to face this issue during their life, how are they going to respond to the sovereign God and are they going to respond to sovereign God on God’s terms. So we have in Romans 1, I guess it’s around verse 18 and 19, we have the teaching that there is a revelation in creation that is sufficient to draw to every man’s accountability the necessity of knowing there’s a God in Heaven who is in charge to whom they must respond appropriately. And there’s two parts of that, knowledge that’s revealed in the creation that is His eternal power and His God-head. In other words, God is able and God is King. And those two aspects of God’s characteristics are broadcast into all the world, every generation, every creature ever born into the world, comes into contact with those teachings through the creation and the Scripture says that, “therefore they are without excuse,” because God has revealed to them sufficiently that which they need to come to God in faith. And there is this sufficiency of revelation in the creation for man to call upon God, to come to God. Let’s look carefully then at verse 1:21, “In light of that they are without excuse” concept, it gives us this picture here number one, “when they knew God.” There’s some point in time where that sense of revelation strikes upon the person, when they knew God they didn’t respond to Him as they should. Look at the responses due that revelation. The response number one, glorifying Him as God, they’re worshipping the King. Glorifying Him as God and thankful. They accept and acknowledge that the power of God has provided for them in their circumstances. So through His power and through His person they have clearly responded back to God properly. But the chief objective here with giving glory and giving thanks to God puts me in a right relationship with God which is the only means by which I can commune with Him all the days of my life and it’s the only means by which I’ll ever gain entrance into Heaven. In other words, my own person has to respond to God in such a way that I abase myself and exalt God completely with complete abandon. That distinction of who God is in my response to Him is the primary foundation of man’s relationship on the earth. And what God has done in salvation of course, He’s reconciled us to Himself through the blood of Christ so that which He would use to push us away by our guiltiness of sin, He has torn down and the invitation is open for us to come back and receive forgiveness and have that relationship properly established. But the relationship properly established is the relationship where God is God. He’s a powerful God who we worship and glorify and God has a place in our life with concern and honor and care that exceeds any other matter in our life. And it’s that proper relationship with God that is a fundamental issue and when you go through all these verses on vanity we’ll understand that the chief foundation of vanity is found right in that verse Romans 1:21 because the Scripture says, “They glorified Him not and neither were thankful but became vain in their imaginations, they became vain in their imaginations and their foolish heart was darkened.” I want to say to you this, there is resident in man, every man at birth, a natural vanity by which he himself exalts himself above God and above all that is called God. And the very condition, the very nature of lostness to man’s soul is a false sense of self-importance that’s exalted above and beyond God in every matter. Pride is at the very foundation of man’s broken relationship with God and it’s essentially who we are without God, we are proud people period and it shouldn’t be a surprise to us though to me I always hate being shown my pride as a believer because it’s such a hidious thing to have pride so I want to deny that I have it because I don’t want to be hidious. But it’s a struggle, it’s a constant struggle of nearly every breath that I know in terms of just walking right with God. There’s always that temptation to crowd in the spotlight where God is and seek some of His glory and want to bask in some of that glory of God. But in this foundational understanding in terms of vanity, vanity is the improper exaltation of man and the satisfaction of his own desires according to his own purpose, that’s what vanity is. It’s built exclusively around his interest as he perceives it, his desires as he feels them, and his wisdom and his understanding as he delights in them for his own cause and his own end and that’s what vanity is. So what happens is this vain imaginations are that which I think in my head and in my spirit, it’s that which I think so that my agenda is satisfied. Now we have a little connecting point to that Old Testament proverb many many years ago that says this, “The heart is deceitful above all and desparatly wicked who can know it?” This nature of my heart in its deceit, in its desparate wickedness is for it to be exalted in some way shape or form. What I want to say then in conclusion, as we work through the discussion on vanity this morning and understand what it means as it relates to you and I as believers and those that we speak to and those who would feign to be believers but are not because they are believing in vain, the object of understanding is simply this, I’ll kind of bring it up front to you and then we’ll work through it as we get through. To believe in vain is to believe in such a manner that my own person, my own flesh has considered its advantage and in considering its own advantage it lays a hold of a belief in God or a belief in Christ, it lays a hold of some form of that belief strictly in connection with its own self advancement. So one who is believing is truly not believing at all. One who is believing in vain truly has no concept or no consideration or no experience of repentance because they are not changing their mind about who they are, they are vaunting themselves in this opportunity of belief. And to believe in vain is to hear a word that approaches my vanity and to have my vanity stimulated and to be attracted by that vanity and to embrace that vain word and to have a faith and the words in that vain belief may be words about Christ, in fact they may be words that have some accuracy to His work and purpose, but the manner in which they were presented and especially the manner in which they were received was such that the flesh was stimulated in hope to its own self satisfaction instead of the flesh being denied and put below and repentance kicked in and an embracing of that which God has truly preserved and given to man. So that’s this primary picture of vanity.
Let’s run through some Scriptures and watch this follow through as it were. Here is Romans 8:20 and it’s an interesting picture here about what God did at the fall, Adam and Eve, for the creature was made subject to vanity not willingly but by reason of Him who hath subjected the same in hope. Here is what God did. Here’s the fall of man, here’s man’s displacement from the Garden and being set aside so that he has to be redeemed in order to be back in a right relationship with God and in that context God says here’s something that I’m going to do to the nature of man, I am going to subject man to vanity. So God put in man a master, the master of vanity. In that concept of vanity you need to understand that the word vanity has kind of like a double loaded meaning in most of its context. It always means empty because it is empty, lacking the very person and purpose of God. It’s hollow because it’s filled with the purpose of man instead of the purpose of God and the purpose of man cannot satisfy man so there’s an emptiness there, there’s a hollowness there and God made man subject to vanity. That’s that picture of Romans 1:21, they became vain in their imaginations and their foolish heart was darkened. This darkening that occured and the subjegation to vanity, God put man in a situation. And here’s basically on a real elementary level how that works out, from Genesis 3 on this is what’s been the lot of man: man takes an assessment of the earth, he takes assessment of his lot and how is he going to survive in this world and how is he going to make it, how is he going to reach the end objective? He starts vying for and viewing and taking consideration of making it in this world and God makes him subject to that consideration, in fact we find that his ability to make it was significantly decreased at the fall and he has a whole lot more labor and a whole lot more sweat of his brow to come about and make his bread because of that vanity. And as man pours in all of his energy just to survive and just to put bread on the table and to consider his life continuing, in that contest of just competing for life, man begins to develop an understanding of the hollowness of life. What’s the purpose of life? What’s the meaning of life? And all I’m doing, I get up every morning and I work hard and all I do is provide a meal and that’s all and we live another day and then we go back to work. What’s the value of life? Man is saddled with the burden of vanity by God’s own purpose. So he says, “Not willingly but by reason,” God had a reason for it. “By reason of Him who hath subjected the same in hope.” So what happens is this, God subjected the earth to that which was hopeless in its own self-contained contest and caused man to develop a hollow emptiness and in that hollow emptiness He provided that questioning, that wondering, “Isn’t there more to life than this? Is all there is to life? Is this it? Do I have it all?” And that sense of dissatisfaction with my lot is instilled because God has subjected the world to hope. There is something better than this lot. There is the hope that has been brought to us in Jesus Christ. And so man’s capacity for hope is found in his sentence that God gave him to vanity. And what I would like to put into a short term English is this, if God permitted man to be satisfied in his labor, man would never seek anything eternal, we would just become perfect little earthlings with all of our houses in order and all of our lands in row and everything functioning and prospering and we would just be happy with that. Now if you take a quick look at our world, that’s what the world is all about. The world out there is striving for this and they can’t get there because God has knocked the third leg out of the chair and it’s never going to arrive. There’s vanity with a hole in it and you’ll never find that satisfaction. So in that context, I’m starting to form a defintion about vanity. Vanity relates to my sense of salvation being found in the earth where we live today. And that sense of permenance of salvation and that richness of reaping of salvation, to have all of that gathered up and found in the work of my life. In a sense, salvation that is vain is a salvation that redeems man from the curse now on the earth and allows him to reap that which is beyond the curse on the earth. So we find men always coveting and attracted to that which might remove the vanity and remove the curse.
Now let’s move on again. In 1 Corinthians chapter 3 there’s this little statement. I’m not going to be able to go to each passage fully. You just jot them down and you can look them up later. But in 1 Corinthians 3:20 it says this, “And again the Lord knows the thoughts of the wise that they are vain.” That’s a beautiful insight into wisdom in the world. He’s talking about who? The wise of this world. Go back to the passage and study it and you’ll see he’s talking about the wisdom of this world and he says, “The Lord knows that the thoughts of the wise are vain.” What does that mean? Well it means simply this, the wisdom of the world, are you listening? Because it’s out there, it is out there by the bucket. The wisdom of this world is a wisdom that is designed to help you make it in the world, to help you succeed, how to get rich without really trying or how to have a happy this or a happy that. I want to pause and just ask a question, how much, going to the Christian book store, I haven’t been in a long time, but go into the Christian book store and look on the book shelves and ask yourself a question, how much of this is worldy wisdom? How much of this is vanity? In other words, how much of this wisdom is simply designed to help you have a happier life on the earth? It’s writings to help you be more prosperous, to have a better relationship with your spouse, get along better with your kids, be more prosperous at work, have less stress, use your time more. Everything is just focused on earth productivity and success. That’s all vain and the Lord knows that. And the net total of man’s wisdom, when a man sits down and a man reasons and a man tries to come up with wisdom and counsel, a man will always end up with a vain solution because man addresses the earth zone and he’s attempting in the earth zone to accomplish only that which satisfies and fulfills and meets the model that we find on the earth. But the Lord knows that the thoughts of the wise that they are vain.
Moving along, you’re going to have to be forgiving to me. I’m running through the passages in a sequential fashion and there’s a little jumping around but don’t lose the trains of thought that I’m developing. Chapter 15 of 1 Corinthians verse 2 which says, “By which ye are also saved if you keep in memory what I preached unto you unless that you have believed in vain.” Here’s one of those passages that I mentioned earlier and he’s talking about the Gospel, the Gospel of Jesus Christ by which ye are saved if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you unless you believed in vain. I want to just lay it out simply to you. Here’s Paul teaching the Gospel and as Paul is preaching the Gospel, can we accuse him of vanity in his preaching? In 1 Thessalonians, he certainly makes case for, “I didn’t come to you in vanity. I can prove that to you, I came and I was persecuted for what I taught and I didn’t come in the modes of vanity at all.” The preacher wasn’t vain but the preacher who wasn’t vain is worried about the hearer being vain. Think about that. How can a person hear the true words of God in vain? Failure to keep in memory exactly what was preached. Failure to keep in memory exactly what was preached. You have to understand something and this is what is part of the Thessalonians message, the Word of God doesn’t get preached in any one setting in an isolated fashion, it’s never isolated. The people that the Word of God is preached to are already in some form of contest for survival in their own lot, in their own realm of existence. They’re already there. They’re already struggling, they’re already about those affairs. And the Gospel comes in and it sheds an angle of light but these people before they hear the Gospel are already striving after vain wisdom to make it. They’re striving to achieve and to get to the end of the rope. So there’s already that engagement to the process and so when the Gospel comes in, it’s in a sense like a slap up side the back of the head that says, “You’re going all about it the wrong way. There’s a different way and there’s a better way.” So when that Gospel comes into play, there’s a tension immediately in the heart of the hearer with his earthly situation, with his earthly lot. And here’s what I want to say, it’s simply this: it’s that tension that I’m having with my earthly setting, with my earthly situation, with my earthly relationships with the context of those that I’m connected to and walking with, it’s in that relationship that I begin to have temptations that are vain and I begin asking a question, “Well what is so and so going to think about me? Well how will this look at work?” All of a sudden the thoughts of vanity come upon me. And it is possible for a man to reason in vanity about the nature of the Gospel and then to believe in vain. What happens when you believe in vain, Paul makes it very clear here. When you believe in vain, that which was clearly preached is set from the memory and this pseudonism, this something that is kind of an imitation picture of what was preached is replaced and you lay a hold of that which is in your own better feeling understanding and this pseudo message is what you lay a hold of and now you’re believing in vain. And it looks like, it looks like you’ve believed because you’ve taken that which was the pure Word, you’ve modified it in terms of your contest of earthly gain and you’ve seen that it will affect your earthly gain in a positive way and so you’ve believed in vain and you’ve accepted it on a carnal level, but you’ve only accepted it as an asset to your carnal pursuit and you’ve believed in vain. And clearly and absolutely, you are no more saved than a door post. You are absolutely confusing the issue and you’re deceiving yourself. There’s no salvation because you’ve set aside. See that process of salvation has to have either that which is truly of God come in and take over or that which is from God, just like Romans 1:21, it gets set aside and a vain imagination takes over and your foolish heart gets darkened. What I want to say is, we live in a world today for inumerable reasons by which many people have believed in vain. And these many people who’ve believed in vain have a false sense of security in the Gospel based upon that which has attracted them and based upon that which they’ve put together and assembled to give them assurance. That is a severe warning. And I want to tell you, Paul is not afraid; he does it all the way through his epistles, hes not afraid to challenge people on believing in vain. What I want to say in summary, basically, is this: it’s possible to believe in vain and there’s not necessarily any means by which I can recognize that you believed in vain immediately. Where did I hear this? I heard somebody, who’s the great evangelist? George Whitfield, back in the early days of our country, in the founding days of our country he was an evangelist. And somebody asked him how many had come to Christ. He said, “I need to tell you something, I don’t know because there’ll be many that come forward and claim the Name and pray the prayer but there be few that walk away and walk after Christ. I would prefer to refrain from passing judgment until I’ve seen a little fruit as if someone really believed.” That’s an important picture because there are many many people who can be momentarily through vanity tempted into walking this path but it doesn’t necessarily, it’s never reached the heart and addressed the issues of the heart that makes a change.
Moving along here I don’t want to do too much repetition. Ephesians 4:17 is my next stopping point. “This I say therefore and testify in the Lord that you henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk in the vanity of their mind.” At this point I just want to get back to one of my original points and that’s simply this: the Greek mind, the Gentile mind is a mind based upon wisdom and vanity. Here’s what happens and here’s a strong warning to you and I, the natural mind of the Gentile of the Greek mind, the natural mind of man is such that they take information and process it in a logical understanding so that its best effects are pointed towards them in the best way possible and then they’re confident and convinced because of the arrangement of the understanding that they have. I’ve personally seen this when I have talked to people, I’ve talked to Bible college professors for example. And in talking to Bible college professors I have found vanity as the basis of their instruction. I’ve opened a passage of Scripture and I’ve said, “It seems to me that if I take the Word of God as it’s read, as it’s written, that perhaps the Lord is telling us this.” And I’ve had the Bible college professor say back to me, “If you just took the passage on its face, you’re right it would have that meaning. But we know,” and then he brings out his vain argument and this highly constructed set of cause and effects of this and that, the intakes and out-takes, this little sum of doctrine and then he sets forth the sum of doctrine and says, “So therefore we know that it doesn’t say that.” All I can say is the Scripture commands us not to walk in the vanity of our minds as the Gentiles walk. And a vanity of our mind is this: if you have to first intellectually process the Gospel before you believe, you’ve got a vain mind and what you’ve believed isn’t the Gospel. You’ve believed a vain construction of it for your own advantage. And not only are you deceived but you’re lost. Those are hard words but it’s the truth. (I’m just trying to understand this theme of what you’re saying. Don’t you have to intellectually process the doctrine or comprehend it?) No. The Holy Spirit has to comprehend you in order for you to be able to comprehend anything. The intellects of man is devoid. Romans 1:21, man is vain in his imaginations. The way that man processes information is not sufficient to come to a knowledge of God. (God uses our intellect.) Well if you’re going to just talk about physiological little constructs, when you heard the Word did you hear it through your ears or not? Yes but we know as Christ taught that that wasn’t the point of His message and that wasn’t the issue that He was addressing because He said, “hearing, you shall not hear, seeing ye shall not see,” for what? “For your heart is waxed gross and you can’t hear.” So the work of hearing, the work of processing the Gospel information is not an intellectual work in its first degree. In its first degree it’s a work of revelation by the Spirit of God in my heart and it’s the brokenness of my heart that enlightens me, that opens up my understanding and the Holy Spirit works through that understanding and of course at that moment then He opens my understanding. But my intellectual understanding is opened in a secondary fashion to the primary work of the Holy Spirit which is a humbling of my spirit and I exalt God above all and I humble myself before Him. It’s just a matter of context. I want to say simply this, if you think you can take one baby step in Christ apart from Christ, you’re deceiving yourself. You began by faith and how do you grow? You’re going to grow by works of your own construction, your own devices? No you’re going to grow by the same faith that you started with. And when you see the work of the Holy Spirit figured into the factor it’s pretty essential that we understand what Paul said in Romans 8 for example that if the Spirit of God is not in you you’re not even His. You’re none of His because it’s the Spirit of God taking up residency in you that begins to do the work, the Spirit does the prompting and I have this process of learning to walk in not quench the Spirit, learning to walk after the Spirit, learning to test the Spirits to see if they be of God or not. So that process of spiritual life is a vital thing. I want to say, I respect and I have mercy on the general understanding that very often the church gets itself to the point where it’s just trying to sustain itself on the logic of doctrine and I know that many of our backgrounds have that in line. We’ve gone through some system of theology and I want to tell you that to some degree, every system of theology is well rounded and complete and it seems to have all the logic tightly put in place. But the problem in most systems of theology is when it has an objective of achieving this end as it means by which it assembles all this great wealth of truth, it’s vain in its inception and it’s product is useless and its application is hazardous to our health. And we are needing to be a little bit more humble minded and a little bit more simple so that Christ might nurture us, so that Christ might teach, Christ might keep us in the Truth. Jay – (I think 1 Corinthians 2:14, “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God for they are foolishness unto him neither can he know them because they are spiritually discerned.”) Thanks for reading that. I wanted to bring it up but I thought I said it last week and I shouldn’t keep repeating myself but it needed repeating. 1 Corinthians 2:14. But we have to understand that there’s a spiritual contest at stake here. And the Gospel isn’t a set of correct facts about Christ that people get redeemed by. No the Gospel is a set of relationships to the Heavenly Father that have been ordained and established through Christ and He is at work in the spiritual aspect of man. When you get to Romans 8, what’s the evidence? Let me ask this question. What evidence do you have that you’re saved? What evidence do you have that you’re saved? What kind of proof do you have? The Scripture talks about us having some kind of proof, what kind of proof do you have that you’re saved, what is it? What is the evidence that we’re saved Jay? (God’s chastening.) Well o.k. that’s an evidence. Actually if you’ll look at 1 John he gives you a whole batch of stuff. But yes it’s through the Spirit, I’m thinking of Romans 8 primarily. The Spirit rises up within us and we cry, “Abba Father.” My sense of belonging to God is an emotional intellectual sense. It’s not just in emotional, it’s founded on factual evidence that has been revealed in the Word, but that factual evidence occured in history and God Himself in person turned His heart toward us and He received us. And all I can tell you is this, if God didn’t receive you, you’ll know it. The inference of the Spirit brings life. [?] Thank you for saying that because that’s an important doctrine to (tape turned here…) … (it’s possible to perceive the information completely perfectly or correctly, have a correct understanding of what the Gospel is and to have mental assent to it, I guess, without a transfer of that into your internal heart. And it’s possible to have the Word of God occurring within your spirit without a perfect understanding of the information and does that make sense? That’s part one, part two is the definitions that you’ve given for vanity, I’m trying to separate the two things here because I think that there’s this vain salvation that you’re speaking of and then there’s a definition of vanity where the person sinned which is really when we sin. When we sin we’re elevating ourselves and we’re putting ourselves on the throne of our lives instead of having God in His proper place and consequently we’re out of proper relationship with God whenever we do that the question is that as a Christian being vain, other than questioning my salvation what do I do?) I understand your question. Let me rephrase the structure because I may not be able to answer it completely or directly at this moment in the desire to finish discussing the issue from Scripture and we may be running out of time. But for Paul, let me just flip quickly to 1 Thessalonians, there’s a real interesting verse found in verse 13 when he’s talking about the work of God in their life through the Gospel and he said, “For this cause we also thank God without ceasing because when you received the Word of God which ye heard of us, you received it not as the word of men,” that would be vanity, that would be receiving it in vain, that would be a vain belief, “not as the word of men but as it is in truth the Word of God which effectually works in also in you that believe.” So suddenly now Paul has this really interesting transcript of what takes place in the life of the human. The natural man can only believe in vain and the natural man if he’s going to believe will believe in vain and that’s all one and of itself. But that’s the clarity of preaching of Gospel and Paul always exalts the proper teaching and the proper receiving of the Gospel first becuase if you get that place first, then you’ll resolve a lot problems. And what I want to say and this isn’t to you at all Burt personnally but the first lesson is a lesson that says, “Well have you believed?” I’m not challenging you personally, it’s the question that’s right. It’s right to have that question. There’s nothing false about raising up the question, Did you believe in vain? Paul did it, “except you believe in vain.” There’s nothing wrong with asking the question because what? If I find myself suddenly to have believed in vain, it may be very well the Spirit of God working in me that good thing which I always wanted by pretense and so now I believe not any longer in vain but by revelation and now I have that which I need to be brought into the process and the life. So the second part of the equation and this is why it gets so troublesome, when you believe not in vain, you have a hold of that salvation which is going to continue an effective work until the day of Christ and all I’ll tell you is this, as a son of God God is going to love you as a son and He’s going to discipline you and He’s going to work in your life that corrective process so that the little vain things that you’re doing in the process of Christian life, He’s going to work those out of you and if He can’t He’ll take your life. He’ll remove you from the world, not in judgement because you’re going to go to Hell, but so that you don’t be damned on the day. So what we see here with the Thessalonions Paul was excited because he saw that connection whereby the Word became effectual and there became the life giving reality of the Word connected to the heart. And you know for Paul this was the satisfactory work because that’s all his job was, his job was to carry in the sacred message with carefulness and with sincerity and present it to the people in the name of God, not that he was in any way be drawn out as someone in particular to follow after but that Christ would be to follow after and then in the situation that developed in three weeks he had to hurry and leave town, but that sincere offering of the word was received in the proper manner and therefore Paul could rejoice because the Word of God had reached the heart of man. That’s it. Bingo, you win. Game over. Not over in the sense of not having to work out the details of salvation from day to day but in that you finally reach the point of connectedness whereby he says, “The Word of God effectually works also in you that believe.” That is to me the joy because I have children and I want my children to make it and this helps me understand the objective. In order for my children to make it I have to in some way make sure that they don’t believe in vain but they believe as it is the very Word of God, they believe God and that when they believe God and when God’s Word reaches their heart, then I have this hope, I have a strong hope that the Word of God is going to reach my children’s heart and it’s going to effectually work in them that good thing. What a security that gives me as a dad because it is impossible other than that to raise up kids in a wicked and perverse generation. Gary- (The Word warns us not to lean to our own understanding. I’ve learned to replace my intellect with the Word if there’s something that I’m having trouble with like two Scriptures conflict one another, at the beginning of the passage it tells me one thing and at the end it’s telling me another. I could go into that concordance and look up the root names and the words and I can understand more what God’s talking about rather than use my own reasoning [?] to come to the conclusion.) That’s an excellent exhortation Gary. That reminds me of when I was first saved. Proverbs 3, I think it became Sally’s favorite one, because it was hers I caught on to it, “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not to thine own understanding, in all thy ways acknowledge Him and He will direct thy paths. Be not wise in your own eyes.” See that “your own understanding,” “be wise in your own eyes,” that’s all the natural man, that’s the Gentile mind, that’s the Greek mind, that’s the flesh, the carnal man which is deceived and deceivable. But those are the things we must deliberatley set aside to lay a hold of Him who will set us right. Then of course He is going to work in our intellect and our understanding in the process. Don’t forget the very teaching of Jesus Christ about the Word of God, how the Word is going to go out. The sower sowing a seed. What happened to the seed? Well some fell on the wayside. Some fell on rocky ground. Some fell among the thorns and some fell on good soil. What happened to the seed? The sower was doing a good job, he was sowing a pure seed but it was the response that was the issue at stake. And I want you to understand that as the Holy Spirit gave insight on that occasion as Jesus spoke this is what He said, “That which was on the wayside, that was the Word that fell and your heart was so hard that it just lay there like a little lump and a bird came and snatched it away,” Satan took it away before it ever sunk in it never made it. Or the rocky soil, what happened? It found a little bit of root and began to grow and the excitement gets stirred up but then what happens? The heat of the sun comes out and there’s no root. And what happens? The seed dries up. I’ve had people try to convince me that that person’s saved. I don’t think Jesus was trying teach that there were many kinds of belief all to salvation, I think He was trying to teach that there’s only one kind of belief to salvation and that’s one that bears fruit. This vain belief, this rocky soil is someone that has a little bit of dirt and a whole lot of rocks but when the sun rises and persecution rises that’s why I pointed out earlier, notice that Paul says when he talks about vanity he’s always got a connection to persecution and laboring in persecution because there’s that fire. The fire purifies that sureness of the Word and if you believed in vain, fire tells you “Oh it’s not as good as I thought it was,” and you kind of get away real quick and you brush off your hands and you’re out of there. And the same way with the thorns. Seed falls in there and it starts to get a good root and go upright. It all gets intermingled with the cares of the world and it has no fruit and it dies and there’s no effectual working of God and there’s no fruit from that. But then the good soil is effectual, it gets root, it grows up and bears a harvest, some 30, some 60, some 100 fold but there’s a harvest. You know them by their fruit, that’s what Jesus said.
I think I’ve made my point and I want to just look back at the Word and there’s a couple other warnings I wanted to give in light of that point. Skipping down from Ephesians, Galatians 5:26 says, “Let us not be desirous of vain glory provoking one another and envying one another.” There’s a reminder Burt to the progress of our Christian life, we do have to be on guard to vain glory in our Christian community and here’s a warning directly concerning that. Ephesians 5:6 which I guess is out of sequence, sorry, “Let no man deceive you with vain words for because of these things come up the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience.” Here’s where doctrine becomes real important. Sometimes people hear this message and they say, “Oh you’re not interested in truth. You’re not willing to have clear words to be out there and presenting.” That’s not at all of my concern or my not wanting to. What I’m concerned with is this: truth is in competition with error and error is always vain words and the question is am I going to be deceived by vain words or not, that’s the question. And vain words are always contrived to deceive and you go out and you look at every false teaching, every cult that’s out there on the market and you’ll discover words that are meant to draw them around this little special circle, this little intimate group of people and there they are they’re all set together and they’re the only ones that have the knowledge of the truth and they’ve got their doctrine all ironed out and all worked out and then they’re evangelistic and they’re going to win others to this cause that they have and pervert the mind of other people. It’s astonishing and the Lord says don’t let anyone deceive you. Have you ever given consideration to the fact that you’re responsible for whether you’re deceived or not? It’s not your mother or your brother but it’s you. You’re responsible for your being deceived and you’re going to be deceived always if you’re operating out of a vain mind. If you’ve never dealt with vanity in your mind, if you’ve never had that vanity dealt with and if you do not know how to approach Scripture without vanity, you’re going to be tossed around by every wind of doctrine and cunning slight of men, that’s what Satan’s out there. He’s got the Word and he’s got his little apostles and they’re running around everywhere pareting and encouraging and inviting and deceiving. “Let no man deceive you for because of these things comes the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience.” Just remember one thing, vain glory is disobedience. It’s a fruit of disobedience and it might please you and might win your intellect, it might convince you, but it’s vanity and it’ll be judged in the wrath of God and that’s a very severe and a specific warning.
Now picking up that theme, I want to run with that theme a little bit, Colossians 2:8, “Beware lest any man spoil through philosophy and vain deceit after tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world and not after Christ.” I don’t have time to develop it now but do you know what Paul’s talking about there, “traditions of men, rudiments of the world?” Do you know what that’s talking about. The Judeic Law. The rudiments of the world is the Old Testament Law. The tradition of men is the way they implemented it. And this whole temptation of the day in which Paul wrote these epistles was this Judeic group of people who tries to infiltrate the whole Gospel kingdom and convert everyone to a Judeic type of Christianity. They wanted all the Gentiles conforming to the Jewish law and customs. That was there method and that was their motive. And they were saying Christ is fine but you have to do this. And so there was the warning, “Don’t be someone else’s spoil.” That simply means somebody wants you in their club so they can put another number up, “Yeah we got another one, we’re winning the world; we’re doing it by our great might.” And of course the picture there of the purity of the Gospel message is not after Christ. In other words, if I preach Christ and Him crucified I have a pretty clear stable Gospel message, I’m going to be able attract people and I’m going to bless their lives and I’m going to keep them from deceit and that’s my motive and that’s my objective. Now in 1 Timothy chapter 1 verse 3, listen to this, I’ll read it quickly, “I besought thee to abide still at Ephesus when I went into Macedonia that thou mightest charge some that they teach no other doctrine, neither give heed to fables, endless genealogies which minister questions rather than godly edifying which is in faith, so do.” Now the end of the commandment, what commandment? The Old Testament commandment. The end of the commandment is love or charity out of a pure heart. We touched on that last week. “The end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart and of a good conscience and of a faith unfeigned.” There’s that picture again of a vain faith, a vain belief. “Faith unfeigned from which some having swerved have turned aside to vain jangling.” That’s a graphic picture of doctrinal contest in the local church in the heart of believers and among those who perhaps are not believers. But this contest between sound doctrine which is a doctrine that exalts the work of Christ and that work completed by faith and this vain jangling of commandments and good works and all these things that the Jews and Judaizers were bringing upon them. Notice the picture though, it’s a turning aside. You can’t have both. You’re either going to fill the vain theology or you’re going to fill your heart and your spirit with God. Verse 7, look what these vain janglers do, “desiring to be teachers of the law understanding neither what they say nor whereof they affirm.” They’re bringing the law into the church and they were preaching a law and trying to bring a conformity to the law in the Christian church and that was a vain jangling and it says they don’t even understand what they’re affirming. Verse 8 Paul gives us a good take on the law, “But we know that the law is good if a man uses it lawfully, knowing this that the law is not made for a righteous man.” Did you ever hear that phrase before, “the law is not made for a righteous man?” “Now we have a righteousness apart from the law, a righteousness that’s by faith in Christ and when we have faith in Christ we are righteous men and the law is not for us but the law is for the lawless and the disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners and for unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers, murderers of mothers, of manslayers, for whoremongers, for them that defile themselves with mankind, for menstealers, for liars, for perjured persons, and if there be any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine according to the glorious Gospel of the blessed God which was commited to my trust.” I want to say briefly in passing that the warning there to Timothy in the early church this was in one of the Macedonian churches. Excuse me it was in Ephesus and he was in Macedonia. But the warning here is about these Judaizers coming in and trying to take the law and make the law some external conformity to the practice of the Christian faith. And that is not the work of the Gospel, that is not the work of Christ, that is something that’s in opposition to it. The law is brought down as a mirror, it’s a school master, it shows me I need Christ. When I have Christ, there is a holy work of the Holy Spirit that takes over in my heart and God begins owning me as a son and that work of the Spirit what? It writes the law in my heart and I have no need that any man point out all the details of the law because the very essence, the very nature of the law Paul says in Romans 8, the very essence of the law, the ordinances of the law are fulfilled by the Holy Spirit in me as I learn to respond to the Spirit. So the believer has to learn the sensitivity and obedience to the Spirit and they will know when they’re out of tune with the Spirit, when they are behaving as the godless and the ungodly.
I have no more time so let me just point to you, there are some more verses in Timothy concerning profane and vain babblings and oppositions of science falsely so called, but he says to shun profane babblings for they lead more and more to ungodliness. Now here’s something that I just want to kind of draw in focus. When we are focused so clearly on these vain janglings, when we’re arguing these doctrinal premise, just take a look at your life. Ask yourself a question, what is this leading to in terms of spiritual godliness in your life? Is there an increase of godliness as you’re engaged in this debate and process of exultation or argumentation? Take a check because that’s exactly what Satan wants to do. Satan wants to engage us and the vanity of argumentation so that we have a vain kind of belief that begins to get develped in us and takes us away from the simple faith and belief and obedience of the Gospel. And it is a warning the early church struggled with and if the early church struggled with it, how much more we today when we have the same kind of struggle, the same kind of carrying on with the temptations of the flesh to be pleased and the foolishness of our own sense of intellectual prowess. I love that phrase there, “science so called.” That still plagues us today in the church. Science has supposedly put the Bible in its place among the intellectuals and praise God. The science so called that has put the Bible in its place, can’t even connect two thoughts logically in the whole sequence of their arguments as their primary motive is just one thing: to exalt man and to keep God off the throne. That’s the false use of intellectual prowess to accomplish vanity.
I do have to quit today and we will pick up reading Thessalonians next week, but in closing I just want to warn you and encourage you that it is possible to be engaged in vanity as a believer. It is possible to be engaged in vanity as an unbeliever. It’s possible to engage in a type of Christianity that’s no Christianity at all because you’ve engaged at it out of the wrong motive. And here’s the simple conclusion, everyone of us here have a carnal man within us. Everyone of us have that carnal man and that carnal man is not subject to the law of God and neither will it ever be. And if you and I give reign to the carnal man, the fruit of that work is going to always be death in our life, it’ll never be life. The carnal man is not going to lie down and roll over and play dead. He won’t do that so what has to happen? We have to learn that denying the flesh. When Christ said, “Take up My cross and deny yourself and follow Me,” that deny yourself, that yourself is the screaming demands of your flesh to have its way in the circumstances in the world that you live and there’s the place of self denial. And the Christian who will not walk in self denial is not a Christian who is capable of processing information accurately because he’s not processing information spiritually; he’s processing it intellectually and he’s using vain reasonings. And all I can say is because we do have intellect, because we do have capacities to read, to study, to write, any man can pick up this book and study it but because we have that natural capacity to do that kind of study, we have to be warned that it is not in that capacity that we’re going to come to an understanding, it’s in brokenness and a contrite heart, “a broken and a contrite spirit I will not despise,” saith the Lord. The Lord is dealing in brokenness and He’s reaching those who have need and He’s surrendering the greatest treasure on earth to those that have need. “Come unto Me all ye that labor are heavy laden.” The vanity of the Gentile mind leaves us heavy burdened and heavy ladened but we come unto Christ and He will give us rest, “Take my yoke upon you and learn of Me for I am meek and lowly of heart and ye shall find rest for your souls.”
Let’s pray. Lord we confess that we are always prone towards vanity. We thank You for the clearness of Your Word that just so plainly tells us that our natural man is uncapable of any kind of spiritual process of information. And we thank You Lord that You have made it very clear to us that all that is true, all that is an inheritance from Christ, all that You have for those who love You Lord that’s been held back as a secret and it’s Your wisdom Lord that You have given through revelation by the Holy Spirit. We confess that Lord and we confess that without You we have no means of understanding the first word of Your Holy Scripture, that though we might read the words and though we might put them into logical charts and categories though Lord except You open our understanding, we would be in darkness even today. Lord I ask that You would give us a humble heart, give us that meekness and that humility of Christ Lord He who was sitting on Your throne equal with You made Himself of no reputation, conformed Himself made Himself a servant and conformed Himself even to the image of death. And Lord that is the heritage of our faith, through humility we find life and through casting ourselves at Your feet Lord You have lifted us up. Help us to understand and not walk in vanity. Lord help us as parents to not feed vanity to our children’s minds but to not rest at all except that Christ be exalted and that we be Lord fully satisfied in Him and in Him alone. We ask in His name, amen.
(end)