Stepping In His Steps

This weekend is Father’s Day and so I want to look at several verses in Psalm 37:23-24.  When Jesus called his disciples he used a certain phrase, “Come, follow me.”  Those who responded became his disciples.  Notice that this same thing is happening today, 20 centuries later.  Of course, Jesus is not physically here calling people.  But, the Holy Spirit is speaking to the hearts of individuals and through the lives of believers to call out to this world, “Come, follow me.”

Yet, this call to follow Jesus would be like asking a child to follow a professional rock climber.  Without help we are unable to follow Jesus.  Today’s passage makes it clear that those who respond to the call to follow Jesus are not left to do it in their own strength.  Rather, they are helped by God Himself.

The Good Man Fights the Good Fight

Verse 23 starts out by referring to a “good man.”  The word translated as good is a term that can also mean strong, as in strong for battle.  Because the context is not about physical strength it gets translated as “good” as in morally strong.  Perhaps it may be better to see it as strong in faith because that is what is in contention.  It is clearly a righteous man who trusts in the Lord that is in view.  In fact the whole chapter is a treatise regarding the righteous and the unrighteous.  So this is a good man, a man strong in his faith toward God. 

We see the Apostle Paul speaking of this in 2 Timothy 4:7, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”  He has been a strong warrior for the Lord.  The good fight is not fought with physical strength, but with spiritual strength.

Our battle is not with atheists and other religions.  Rather, our battle is first of al with our own self.  The flesh has a powerful way of justifying its lusts and desires.  If we do not restrain it, it will pull us down into a quagmire of serving self.  We also battle against the corrupting influence of this world.  Its culture, institutions, systems and powers are difficult obstacles to overcome in the arena of faith.  Also, we have a spiritual enemy in the devil and his evil spirits.  They operate mainly through deception and temptation.  These three areas of Self, World, and the Devil take a man who is strong for battle.

Of course, none of us are able to conquer these three areas.  Only Jesus has been able to do that.  He is the ultimate warrior.  He has done what none of us could do.  However, this enables us to follow him.  When we stick close to Jesus and put our steps into his steps we will be able to have victory in these areas.  We will talk more about this later.

The Good Man Gets Direction From The Lord

Proverbs 3:5-6 says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding.  In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your paths.”  So in Psalm 37 we are told that the Lord “orders” the steps of a man who trusts him.  Our paths or steps are a picture of the decisions and actions that we do in life.  Put in order we walk a certain way.  Now there really are only two ways in life.  God’s way will lead us to life. But “my” way will lead me to death.  Even if “my” way involves following someone that we look up to, other than Jesus, it is still headed in the same direction.  Yet, believers find that when we try to follow Jesus our way becomes a mixture of veering off the path of Jesus and then course correcting to get back in line.  This may seem futile, but recognize that God is able to direct us through it all.  He is not trying to control our every step so much as inform our every step.  Do you get your directions from Jesus?  Perhaps you wonder how that is possible.

We have the commands and example of Christ given to us in the New Testament.  We also have a powerful instructive picture in the Old Testament that helps us to understand who Jesus really is.  Thus his directions, in general, are given in the Bible.  As you read the Bible you will see that Christ does not call us anywhere that he hasn’t gone himself.  So if we cast off his commands and example we are trusting in our own thinking or the thinking of someone else.  The problem here is not that we are thinking.  Note in Proverbs 3:5-6 that we are only warned against leaning (i.e. putting all your weight upon) on our own understanding.  Yes we have questions and fears.  But we shouldn’t put our weight upon those things.  Instead we should trust the lord.  If we are truly listening, God will lead us and give direction to our path.  He will not force us.  He wants us to follow out of our own heart.  But know this, His direction will give you sure footing on treacherous ground.

The Good Man Is A Delight To God

You may not be particularly excited about your life right now, but God is.  He delights in our trust even when it is the trust of a spiritual babe.  He knows that it will grow and become the trust of a strong man of faith in time.

He also delights in the future to which He is bringing us.  He is leading us to a wonderful goal both in this life and in the life to come.  He sees the end that we cannot see yet and He is delighted in anticipation of the joys we shall have together.  Even when we are told the end goal, we cannot truly grasp how it will come about and what it will be like.  Thus it is our joy to delight in the discovery and realization of those things along with Him.

What about our failures?  Surely God doesn’t delight in us when we have failed.  The reality is that none of us will make it into eternity without having failed.  Only Jesus is the perfect warrior against sin.  God can see over the top of our failures to the person we are going to become.  He loves us, not just in spite of our failures.  In fact, our trust and love become more precious and more of a delight because it is over the top of cuts and bruises in this life.  Our trust becomes that much more precious, which brings us to the point of verse 24.

The Good Man Is Supported When He Falls

God promises to help us when we fall morally.  He knows that our frame is frail and that we are but dust.  This is precisely why He has pledged Himself to help us.  If you put your trust in Jesus, you will make it, period.

We might ask our self why we fell.  Did I fall because I desired sin?  Or, did I fall because someone else sinned against me and I couldn’t let it go?  Perhaps I merely lack skill in a particular area that he enemy is attacking and I am learning to follow Jesus.  Whatever the reason, Jesus knows your difficulties.  If you look to Him and cry out in the time of need, he will help you.

Notice verse 24 says that though a man fall, he will not be cast out.  It is one thing to fall, but quite another to never get up again.  Everyone who has fallen reaches that moment when they realize that they have survived and need to get up, and in fact must.  Can you imagine if the first time you fell off your bicycle you just quit trying ever again?  Though it sounds silly, what if you never got up off the ground and continued to cry and get angry for years on end?  Things that don’t happen in the natural often happen spiritually.  Many people are still laying in the road of some misfortune long ago and, instead of getting up, they just lay there refusing to move on.  Please know this, God is not looking for an excuse to get rid of you or throw you away.  He knows you will fail and He is committed to helping you get up and keep riding until you get it.  However, you must want to get back up and keep trusting Him.  People may cast you aside, but Jesus has pledged, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”  And, that means even when you fail.

In fact, the Lord promises in verse 24 to support us by His own hand.  Allstate insurance can only do so much for you.  But there are far better hands in this world and they are God’s.  The support or bracing of the Lord holds us up so that we do not fail beyond recovery.  Of course we may not want to fall and wish God would keep that from happening.  However, we will never learn if God protects us from the effects of our decisions.  The hand is the symbol of power.  The power of God is Jesus.  He is the hand of God that has come down to save us.  When you trust in those hands they will lift you up through this life and through times of failure and bring you out the other side.  Jesus does this through the work of the Holy Spirit.  The Spirit’s purpose is to come alongside of us and provide the help that we need.  If this is His purpose then He is also working in believers to be such a help to other believers.  I point this out because in engineering bracing is always done through triangles.  Thus God supports us directly by his Holy Spirit and indirectly through other believers.  This triangle of God, You, and Other believers is magnified by the multitude of relationships we can have with other believers.  Let the Lord support you.  If you aren’t a part of a group of believers that are trusting God and helping each other through life then you are missing a great part of how God intends to support you.

Now, the enemy wants you to stay down and refuse all help when you fall.  If you let him, he will get in your head and poison your thinking.  He will lead you to believe that it is impossible for God to love you because you have failed so badly.  In fact he only needs to insert the idea and walk away.  You will do all the work for him by trusting in what he says.  Don’t do that.  You will never recover from failure until you reject the lies of satan and believe the truth of God.  “Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down; for the Lord upholds him with His hand.”  It is not over.  God is not done with you yet.  Trust him.  Rise up and walk!

Stepping in His Steps Audio

The Greatest Birthday Gift

This Sunday is a celebration of the Day of Pentecost.  Some scholars refer to this as the birthday of the Church.  We won’t deal with that debate here today.  However, it is the day that God gave a great gift to His followers.  Just as Jesus was an incredible gift of salvation to the world, so the Holy Spirit is a similarly incredible gift to those who believe on Jesus.  In fact, Jesus had told his followers not to leave Jerusalem until they had received the gift of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit would be taking the place of Jesus.  Just as Jesus taught, so the Holy Spirit would teach.  The Holy Spirit would also work through the Church to heal and do miracles.  The Holy Spirit would be a comforter just as Jesus was to his disciples.  Ultimately, the Holy Spirit would do all that Jesus did, but without the physical limitations and restraints.  Thus today, as hundreds of millions of believers awake, they are instantly greeted by the presence of God’s Spirit.  He who is called the Promise of the Father is with us.  So, today we celebrate that no matter how dark and difficult our situation is, God is with us through His Holy Spirit and that is more than enough.

We are going to look at Peter’s sermon following the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in Acts chapter 2 and verses 36-39.

You Shall Receive The Holy Spirit

When the Holy Spirit is poured out on the disciples, they are in Jerusalem.  The resulting worship and praise of God in many different languages at the same time causes a ruckus that draws the attention of a large crowd.  At this point Peter begins to explain what is happening and why.  They are receiving the Promise of the Father because they are followers of Jesus.  The people recognize that they are in danger of missing out on this promise that they all had been waiting for and so they ask what they should do.  Peter’s answer gives them the hope that they can experience the outpouring of the Holy Spirit for themselves.  It’s not too late.

But, in order to receive the Holy Spirit, the people needed to do some things.  First they needed to repent.  They needed to definitely repent of participating in the death of Jesus.  However, it was their sinful hearts that led up to this act.  They needed to see their own sinfulness before God and turn away from it- both the actions and the mindset that led up to them.  The beautiful thing is that they were “cut to the heart” by Peter’s words.  This is a way of saying that Peter’s words pierced their hearts with sorrow and grief.  I say it is beautiful because it is the very work of the Holy Spirit that Jesus said would be in John 16:8.  “[The Holy Spirit] will convict the world of sin.”  Though the Spirit is being poured out on believers in Jesus, He is also graciously working in the hearts of unbelievers to convict them of their sin.  Conviction of our sin enables us to desire something better.  The word “repent” literally means to turn away from one thing and towards another.  They needed to turn away from the way they were and towards the person and teaching of Jesus Christ.  Of course some will refuse this grace of the Holy Spirit.  Such refusal only hardens us further to His conviction.  At some point an individual can become so hard that they will never repent.

The second thing that is necessary is to identify with Jesus.  I say it this way because we can focus on being baptized all the while losing sight of Jesus.  Baptism is not the critical word in the phrase, “Be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.”  It is actually “Jesus Christ.”  They were used to being baptized in the cleansing rituals in response to the law.  But they were doing it in obedience to the Law of Moses. Now they are to do the cleansing ritual in obedience to Jesus Christ.  This purposeful identification with Jesus is the key point.  We turn from our sins and publically identify with Jesus and his people.  I am a follower of Jesus.  Today there are many baptized people who are letting their sins lead them to identify with the Spirit of this World, rather than picking up their cross and following Jesus.  We redefine who Jesus is and what he would do because we do not want to let go of our sins.  God’s Spirit is given to those who want to turn away from sin and towards Jesus.  In those days there was only one Jesus and the society was polarized as for or against Jesus.  But today we have many different images of Jesus.  This is why it is so important to go into the Bible for yourself and discover who Jesus really is; not what someone says he is.  Are you following the true Jesus or a politically correct Jesus?  Are you following the true Jesus or a socially acceptable Jesus?  Only the true Jesus opens the door for the Spirit of God.  Any other “Jesus” opens the door for the spirit of this Age.

If you do those two things, repent and identify with the true Jesus, God will keep His word.  He is not a liar.  God has been faithful to convict the hearts of people in this world, calling them out from this world to become a part of a community that is being saved from judgment.  Not just that, but, He is also empowering us to work with the Holy Spirit in this.  Peter is the prime example.  The Spirit came upon him and enabled him to preach the truth to his generation.  It was a hard truth and one that Peter would have ran away from in his own flesh.  But now he boldly proclaims to them that they killed the Messiah and need to repent and believe on Jesus.

Now God will always empower those He calls.  His will is two-fold.  Regarding me, the Spirit helps me to keep turning from sin and to strengthen my faith in Jesus.  This is more than maintaining a status quo.  But rather a day by day growing in our understanding of sin’s hold in our life and the trustworthiness of Jesus.  Thus our position in Christ should become stronger over time.  In regards to others, the Spirit enables me to love them with Spirit-filled actions that come from Spirit-led motivations.  Now for believers this is helping to build up their faith.  But towards the lost it is helping to lead them to Christ.

There has never been a time that Christians could do such a work without the Holy Spirit.  No amount of technology and psychological analysis will enable us to do what only the Holy Spirit can do.  We have been given the Holy Spirit because the work cannot be done without Him.  In fact, He is not just another component in this.  He is the Key component.  So what should we do?  We must first make sure that we are turning from sin and towards the true Jesus.  Then we must recognize that God is faithful and the Holy Spirit is with me.  You will not always feel like the Holy Spirit is present, but remind yourself that it is true nonetheless.  Then ask for His help.  Don’t wait until you have tried everything.  Instead begin each day by asking the Holy Spirit for His leading, help, comfort, correction, and guidance.  Then walk by faith.  Whether it is doing what God’s Word says, or responding to a prompting in our heart, we need to walk by faith.  Of course “promptings in our heart” are subjective.  But that does not mean they cannot be real.  God calls us to be mature children who are learning and have learned how to discern the difference between my flesh and the Holy Spirit.  If your heart is in the right place and you are carefully walking out what you believe the Lord is saying to you then God will help you.  Even when you make mistakes, He will help you to see that and grow, and learn.  Let’s be led by the Spirit of God and not the spirit of this world!

Best Birthday Gift Audio

Demons Obey the Command of Jesus

In today’s society it is easy to reject stories of demon possession as ignorant and unscientific descriptions of mental illness.  However, such a dismissive view leaves too many questions unanswered, both in our experience today and in Scripture.  In Luke 8:26-39 we have an encounter that Jesus had with an individual who is described as being possessed with a great number of demons.

So what are these demons?  The basic, biblical answer is that they are evil, spiritual entities that are in league with Satan.  Though they are invisible to the human eye, the effect of their activities can be seen.  Without detail, the Bible describes the reality that demons are able to take varying possession of the faculties and actions of certain vulnerable people.  In the Bible demonic possession involves more than simply “acting crazy.”  There is usually interaction with an intelligence that seems beyond the person, and is repulsed and removed by the power of Jesus.  For a man to go from years of “mental illness” and speaking as if he had demons within him to total transformation within a matter of minutes begs any natural explanation. Such is the case in our story today.  Christians should be careful of seeing all things strange as the result of demons.  However, neither should we fall into the materialistic tendencies of the modern age that sees such things as patently impossible.

Now the title of this sermon is about how demons obey the command of Christ.  How do I mean that?  God’s commands can be prescriptive in the sense of how we ought to live.  Thus His command: love one another as I have loved you.  Yet, God’s commands can also be directive or judicial in the sense of what will happen whether we cooperate or not.  God won’t force us to love one another.  But when he commands demons to leave a man, it is a judicial command that cannot be “disobeyed” any more than a man sentenced to prison can disobey and walk out of court.  They have no choice.

Demons Are Enemies of God and Man

Having crossed the Sea of Galilee, Jesus and his disciples come to the shore of the opposite side in the area of Gadara.  Here they are met by a raving man who has been abused by demons for a long time.  We are given the account of an interaction that Jesus had with these demons and in it we recognize two clear facts: Demons do not care for humans and they are not working with God.

Another thing we find is that demons are numerous.  Regardless the number, a great number of demons were working together to keep this man under their control and to work through him.  Any attempt to quantify the population of demons that are preying on mankind would be pure speculation.  Another point of note comes from Luke 11:24-26.  There we see that some demons are more wicked than others and the condition of a man is worse when more than one demon is involved.  Also, that demons have no “rest” until they have taken possession of an individual.  It stands to reason that wicked individuals become more susceptible to demonic possession as they morally degrade.  We would also expect societies that are heavily involved in working with spirits to see higher numbers of these possessions because they would have a higher number of vulnerable individuals.  Thus some places in the world may see very little of this and in other places it may be a common thing.

Another thing we see here is a classic sign of demonic possession.  Demons always abuse those they inhabit.  The abuse begins in the mind.  A demon that possesses a person will force its personality and will upon an individual from time to time.  Though it may be sporadic at first, it can become worse over time.  In this story the intellect of the man who is possessed does not appear until after the demons are cast out.  However, the abuse is obviously more than mental.  Note that the passage describes the man’s life.  Somewhere along the line these demons began to manifest to the point that the city in which he lived tried to restrain him.  However, nothing they tried was able to restrain the man.  He eventually is driven out into the tombs and lives among the dead and wearing no clothes.  He has become an outcast driven into the wilderness.  Thus demons abuse the host and yet also abuse others through the host.

At this point you might be scared of these beings.  Yet, notice that they are very afraid of Jesus.  As spirit beings they are perceptive of spiritual matters.  Thus they direct the man out of the tombs to meet Jesus at the shore with the question, “What have I to do with you?”  This area lies outside of Israel at the time.  Thus Jesus is stepping onto the spiritual turf of these demons.  He is a threat and they want to know why Jesus is there and what he is doing.  Lastly they are afraid that Jesus might be there to torture them by commanding them into the Abyss.  What is the Abyss?  Sometimes translated as “bottomless pit” it is only explained in Revelation chapter 9.  Here we see it is a kind of spiritual prison for wicked spirits.  Why some are in this prison and not all is not explained.  These demons are clearly afraid Jesus has come to put them in it.  Thus demons would rather be free to roam the earth and possess the vulnerable than be locked up in the Abyss awaiting the end of this Age.

Lastly, we see in this passage the manipulative nature of demons.  As evil beings they cannot be trusted.  Even “truthful” things they may say cannot be trusted.  I am not saying that Jesus is duped here.  However, the demons are attempting to control the situation to their benefit.  As long as they do not end up in the Abyss they are "happy."  They are not happy about Jesus being in this area.  Thus, I believe, the petition to be allowed to enter the pigs is more about creating a scene than attempting to stay in the pigs.  When Jesus allows this, the demons drive the pigs into the sea thus killing them.  This would then deprive the demons of their hosts causing them to escape into the area looking for more prey.  Why would they do this?  There seems to be an element of rage in this scene.  The full, destructive rage of demons is generally checked by their desire to retain possession of a host.  However, in this case, they do not care about the pigs and in a fit of rage throw a kind of tantrum as a means of venting against Jesus.  Yet, they also create turmoil in the area that would make the inhabitants fearful of Jesus and angry at their loss of income.  So there may be a kind of defensive maneuver here to protect their territory. 

Jesus Healed the Demon Possessed Man

Now in looking at the demons we do not want to lose sight of what is happening for the man.  Jesus has healed him of his affliction.  Even more serious than a physical sickness is a spiritual sickness in which one’s inner being is invaded by something worse than cancer.  We see here that no number of demons is a match for Jesus.  There is no battle, nor week long exorcism.  Jesus has absolute command over these demons.  Though they try to manipulate it, they had to leave the man they had controlled for so long.  Now for Jesus it is no problem.  However, for us, some spirits are more difficult than others.  Believers who come into contact with a demon possessed person need to be humble and careful.  Through prayer and fasting we can purge our life of anything that might be between us and our Lord.  Jesus is the power that demons fear.  If they fear believers at all, it will only be because of our close relationship with Jesus and dependence upon his power alone.

The owners of the pigs had witnessed this event and ran to town in order to tell everyone what happened.  Thus a large group gathers at the beach and finds the previously possessed man “in his right mind.”  He is no longer a raving lunatic that is destroying himself and anyone who gets in the way.  He is his “old self.”  Even here we see the recognition that a switch in personality and activity has happened, and without years of counseling and psychotropic drugs.  Unless you write off the account as a myth, it is hard to explain this other than the biblical explanation.  Let me take a moment to contrast the way that God’s Holy Spirit works in the lives of believers to the way demons operate in their hosts.  God does not want to take away control of our own mind.  He wants us to follow Him out of loving obedience.  However, evil spirits lust to subject the personality of an individual beneath theirs in domination.  They operate in an abusive mode, whereas the Holy Spirit operates in a gentle mode.  They operate in deception and manipulative promises, whereas the Holy Spirit operates out of truth and purity of intent.

Even though the man is in his right mind, the locals want Jesus to leave.  He is a "trouble maker" who threatens the order of things in their district.  Their fear of Jesus and what he is capable of doing causes them to push him away.  Jesus is going to leave.  However, I believe this encounter was exactly what he had come to do.  He had come to confront these demons and set a man free.  In light of this we may now have deeper understanding into why the storm threatened to swamp their boat and kill them all.  Spiritual battles often play out in the material world unknown to man.  Christ was causing enough problems in Israel.  Satan did not want him entering other strongholds.

The man’s response is understandably different.  The man is so thankful that he wants to follow Jesus and become a disciple.  He may also be afraid to leave the side of Jesus in that the demons could come back.  How wonderful it would be to follow such a man of power and compassion.   Imagine the safety and joy that would be his in the presence of Jesus.  Yet it was not to be so.  Following Jesus is not always about going somewhere.  Sometimes it is about staying.  It is not that this man lacks the qualifications to be a disciple that followed Jesus around, but rather, it is that Christ had a different purpose for him.  He would become a witness who would spread the truth throughout the area that Jesus delivered him from a legion of demons.  Later when the apostles spread out from Jerusalem due to persecution, Christians would enter this area and find people who were prepared to receive the gospel because of the faithfulness of this man who had been possessed by demons.

Let me close by warning believers.  We may run into this more and more in the United States of America in the future.  We are clearly casting off the Word of God and at the same time embracing all manner of spiritism.  Beware of playing with things that seek to contact spirits or satan even if it seems benign.  Beware of using spirits to try and foresee the future, whether through seemingly innocent Ouija boards or occult rituals.  These spirits are manipulative and deceptive.  By the time you think to back out, it will be too late.  Also, be careful that you are not hiding secret sin in your life because this will inhibit your ability to be a source of freedom for others.  Guard your heart from the seduction of spirits that promise the heavens but instead deliver hell.

Demons Obey Jesus mp3