Are You In The Word Or Is Your Word In The World?
Mark 3:27
"No man can enter into a strong man's house, and spoil his goods, except he will first bind the strong man; and then he will spoil his house"
John 17:17
"Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth."
The lost people of the world hate the word of God. The ruling spirits of the universe hate the word of God. They hated God's will and lost their place in heaven. Satan, who leads the whole world astray, hates God's word. And there has always been a bitter hatred towards the followers of Jesus Christ who are sanctified in Him.
Think about this...the religious leaders of his day rejected Jesus, they refused the Holy Spirit, the unforgivable sin. They were scribes who lived day in and day out in the scriptures. They were priests who worshipped every day, they practiced mass every day. They were Jews who were living a cultural heritage of faith in God. And they rejected the Word of God. Jesus marveled that they missed the truth, and he told them so. Jesus begged the people to take off their denominational glasses and see the truth for what it truly is. Many followed but most rejected him. Just goes to show that you can do church all day long, so much so that you're no longer able to hear the truth of God's word. You only know what the church knows.
So, there's a lot of hate to go around for the people who have received God's word. Now they've got a huge target on their heart. And the avenue that Satan uses to get into their hearts is the mind. So Jesus prays that God would sanctify them with the truth. He prays that God would protect the testimony of the gospel and the believer's minds with the truth. Jesus' hope and prayer was for light instead of darkness and life instead of death. He asks that they'd be protected from the evil one, and enlightened by The Holy Spirit, helping them sustain the shield of faith as they do battle with the wicked world where they are going to spread that word from God. He prays that they'd be equipped for battle by the word because they're not only on defense, but they're also going on the offense.
Like Jesus they were not of the world, but he was sending them into it for the ministry of the gospel, with the gospel that is breathed out by God (2 Timothy 3:16). They're going out to teach it. They're going out to train people in righteousness by it. They're going out to rebuke untruth with it. And they're going out to correct those who have perverted the truth. They've been equipped by the Son of God to challenge the lovers of self. They are inspired by God's word in order to exhort the boastful, the slanderers, the reckless, the traitors, and the conceited lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. They were sent to do battle against those who would build a church upon holding to a form of godliness but denying the source of its power.
What are the consequences of the church that perverts or rejects the word? Disobedience, pride, unholiness, rootless and unfruitful worship. In short, a performance-based church, transactional, a business.
How does this happen?
The apostle Paul shared an observation on how this begins. "They worm their way into households and deceive gullible women overwhelmed by sins and led astray by a variety of passions" (2 Timothy 3:6).
You can get hung up on the gullible women, but there are gullible men as well, today we'd call them a simp, or maybe a cuck. I'm more interested in who "they" are. Who are these ministers of deception?
They are "men who are corrupt in mind and worthless in regard to the faith." False teachers, "always learning and never able to come to a knowledge of the truth". They've misled the church and deceived the congregation in their worship. They've sat in on the Sunday school classes, taught in the Bible study groups, preached in the pulpits and taught in the VBS. All the while spreading the misguided cultural and social gospel and they played around with the worldly pagan practices.
How did they fall into this trap of hypocrisy and deceit?
They resisted the truth. This is why Jesus' prayer focused on that one thing in particular. He knew their minds were already corrupted by traditions, and their faith was worthless when challenged, and so the word would never truly take root in them.
They have the semblance of righteousness. They look the part. They know the lingo. They know the patterns of worship and the calendar of events. And they pray upon the gullible. They invent idols, manipulate the word, and make of it what they want. They build altars to idols like, sacraments, the veneration of the saints, hierarchy among the priesthood, and too many false Christs. And they do all this because they've got no root in God's word. Their faith isn't God-breathed. And so, they profit nothing from any of it.
People listen:
Everybody worships something. Most people who are spiritual worship a church or an idea about the church. That's what "the Church" has become these days. Their worship is an idea. Often idealistic, thinking that righteousness can be achieved through rational arguments and by mutual understanding regarding being good, inclusive, and friendly towards all the idols of the world. The substance is lost. The foundation has eroded away. Only the broken-down shell of the church is left. Long ago the roof rotted and caved in. The footers collapsed. The walls are teetering and in ruins. But it's propped up and whitewashed for now. They're worshipping "a god". Some god, or collection of gods. They're struggling with addiction and asking their gods for help. They're struggling with pornography, adultery, divorce, a child who is lost to their passions, and they're praying to their gods of choice to guide them. And into that situation comes the misleading messages from the Antichrist teachers and preachers. And the first thing they do is adulterate the truth.
Listen...
John 14:6
Jesus told the church, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."
That's the word of truth you need when you're going through your divorce, or your marriage is being destroyed by pornography and adulterous sexual abuse. When your family is fracturing because your child is confused by the world's prideful evil spirits, only one person can save you, Jesus Christ. Clean living can't clean you up, you're not clean enough. You can't work it out at the gym, you need the work of The Holy Spirit. Righteous people can't get you right because no one is righteous but Jesus Christ. The world can't love you because the world has rejected God's love. They loved themselves, they loved their own lives, and their own gods, and so they killed him. They murdered Gods love on a cross. They weren't being inclusive when they did that. They weren't welcoming anybody. They murdered Jesus' body, but the church at the time wasn't trying to kill his body, they wanted to kill his words. They wanted to kill the truth that exposed their hypocrisy. They killed him to shut him up.
The lost can't stand the word because it exhorts them. The self-righteous can't stand the word because it exposes them. And the corrupted church leaders resist the message of the prophets because they're talking about them, and they know it. They beheaded John the Baptist because he prophesied about them. Not because they hated John, but because they wanted him silenced.
Conclusion:
Hebrews 12:12 "Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees"
Today in this world it's more and more difficult to recognize a Christian person. The church has been fully integrated with the world. It used to be that the world was infecting the church, but now it's completely integrated into every corner of the church. Now the faithful are the outlaws. Now those who follow the word are rejected. Now they're crying in the wilderness, "make straight the way of the Lord." And this is why Jesus prayed for them to be sanctified by the truth, God's word.
Here's the good news...a revival in the word is coming. In these last days God will send prophets, preachers and teachers who will make straight paths for the feet of the confused. The church is "drooping", it's gotten tired and weakened by integration with the world, but the word of God remains, and his truth will endure. There will be a revival of the truth. It will be shadowed by a mock revival filled with pride, but the truth will come just the same. You'll know the truth because those who are not in the love of the father are shaped by the world, not by the word. The truth renews the mind. The Antichrist is renewed by the ways of the world. The way of truth follows the sanctifying word. The way of the world is to follow the passions of the world; pornography, addictions, sexual immorality, pagan imagery in your homes and in your bodies, celebrating violence, and promoting lies and greed. If you see these things flee from it, they are not the truth.
Final thought:
They'll come in packages of partial truth. You'll want to believe them because they'll seem good and right. It's not like they'll be downright evil outwardly and always easily discernably evil in all the things they say and do. Jesus said, "No man can enter into a strong man's house, and spoil his goods, except he will first bind the strong man; and then he will spoil his house". One way to learn from that is to see the strongman as the word of God, the thief comes and binds it. The Devil is a thief. He comes to steal away the truth. And he's able to take down the strongman with stress, weeds and thorns, the cares of the world. And what follows is the spoiling of everything.
Be wise and discerning. And if you haven't got discernment, pray for it, after all Jesus prayed you would have it, that means it's available. If you haven't got it, why? If you're in Him, you should.
Just sayin'
God bless you all today and every day.
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