Smith, Daniel H: Spiritual Survival 03 ~ Without Standards 01

Good morning to you all. Glad that you got thought out this morning enough to come over here. I saw some fairly heavy coats out there earlier in the morning. I saw Bob and Janja walking to breakfast with a coat that looked very much like Iowa attire this morning. Then he reminded me that in the years he's been down here, his blood thinned out quite a bit, and I can see how that can happen in all of the gorgeous sunshine that you folks get. This morning, as we begin our studies, I'd like for us to do something a little bit old fashioned and read from several passages of scripture, and I'm going to ask you to start in the Old Testament. We want to read two Proverbs, uh, first of all from Proverbs chapter sixteen, and then a proverb from chapter twenty five. And then we'll move into the New Testament with a couple of specific verses before we read an extended brief passage. Proverbs sixteen thirty two: He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit than he who captures a city. Now over to chapter twenty five, verse twenty eight. Like a city that is broken into and without walls is a man who has no control over his spirit. Now in the New Testament, please. We want to look at two verses, first of all, in Acts chapter twenty four and verse sixteen. These may seem disconnected. I hope we'll connect them together in our studies. Twenty four verse sixteen, the Apostle Paul says, in view of this, I also do my best to maintain always a blameless conscience, both before God and before men. And now over to Romans chapter nine And a reference which seems incidental in verse one, but we'll look at it. Romans nine one: I am telling the truth in Christ, I am not lying, my conscience bearing me witness in the Holy Spirit that I have great sorrow and unceasing grief in my heart. And now a brief passage we want to read in second Timothy three, The opening verses of second Timothy three, beginning in verse one. As you limbering up your Bibles first thing this morning here. second Timothy three one, Paul writes, but realize this, that in the last days, difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding a form of godliness, although they have denied its power. Avoid such men as these. Let's pause again a minute to pray. Help us, Father, as we ponder your word today, to do so with profit. Give us responsive hearts to your truth, and guide us that we may honor you in understanding the scriptures, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Now we're dealing this week with the subject of survival in a society without standards. How do you survive in a society without standards? Ours has become such. But as we've seen in the scripture, and as we're going to be considering particularly in our evening studies from the book of Judges, that this is not the first time that the people of God have found themselves in a situation in which the society around them has given up, has abandoned all standards. And so the scriptures give us very, very real help in these difficult times. And of course, the real issue we want to face is, well, in a society without standards, what do the people of God do? Uh, we were pondering on Sunday morning the claims of the scriptures, God has spoken. And regardless of what our society does, the people of God live in obedience to revealed truth. Uh, we do not give way to the tragic, standardless, uh, benighted life that, that characterizes our society. Obedience to revealed truth. God has spoken. He has given us his word. As we saw in the passage we looked at, the oracles of God have been entrusted to us. And there are some very clear responsibilities. Now, to say that we live in a society without standards, I think is obvious. Uh, many have described our society as either psychopathic or sociopathic. The think of a lot of the senseless crimes that we find in our society. You know, human beings, ever since the days of Genesis three, human beings have committed crimes. Uh, sin manifests itself in violent ways. But one of the things that you find in a society without standards is a strange senselessness of crime. Do you realize in the history of the world, most people, for example, that are murdered, are murdered in the context of family and friends? It is in that context that we have an opportunity to irritate enough, each other enough to drive us to such extremity. But we see so much what we call senseless killing in our society. People slaughtering individuals, sometimes multiple murders of people they have never seen, they don't know from Adam. People who are not at war with them, people who are not, have not had a chance to develop any kind of ire or anger, and we say it's a senseless thing, and it is, it is. And not that murder is, is, is permissible if, if you've known somebody for thirty years and you've had a chance to build a great case of, of hatred toward them. No, no, not that that's approving, but at least in the s- the human sense, eh, from the human perspective, at least it makes sense that we could irritate enough a person, one enough, not one enough to, to create such a reaction. But the senselessness of crime, which characterizes a society without standards. I think that it's interesting that, uh, when you ponder the scriptures, you realize that a society without standards becomes the ideal, the ideal staging ground for what we call man's inhumanity to man. Uh, probably ought to, to revise our statement. It's not really man's inhumanity to man, it's man's humanity to man. Violence, eh, seems to be charac- so characteristic of us that we should not call it inhumanity, we should call it humanity. But at any rate, you know the expression, man's inhumanity toward man. A society without standards becomes an ideal staging ground for man's inhumanity to man. It astounds me as I watch the media and listen to the, the vibes of the world around us in our Western world. We think we have improved greatly. We are all out for the good. We want to save everything from grass to animals to everything, but we want to slaughter our infants by the millions, and one of these days do away with our older people, who to us seem to have no more use in life. Folks, we're in a strange world. We've lost our mooring in our Western world. We live in a society without standards, and the strange dimensions, the violent dimensions of such a society are alarming. But what about the people of God? When it comes to obedience to the word of God, there are some very crucial issues, because, you see, God communicates his standards to us. He hasn't left us to grope and to flounder and to do our own thing and to take public opinion polls to try to find out what's right and wrong. God hasn't left us in that maze. God has spoken, and God has revealed his truth. And our question that we're looking at in these morning sessions is, in what ways now does the, the Christian who is willing to acknowledge that God is and that he has spoken, uh, in what ways does God communicate his standards? In what ways does God bring these to bear upon our lives? Because that's an important issue. It's one thing to say God has spoken, but maybe he's spoken in a language that I don't know. Maybe he has said something, and I am not really tuned into him. How does he really bring to bear on my life that which he has spoken to guide and govern our lives for his glory? How does he do it? Well, this morning we would like to ponder rather quickly here, uh, two related dimensions of biblical truth that help to answer that question. We want to talk for a minute about conscience, and we want to talk about godly self-discipline. Because I believe that when we seek biblical answers to the question, how does God actually bring his truth to bear upon my life? How does he actually communicate his standards to me that these are important parts of the biblical answer? Now, first of all, a word about conscience. If I were to define conscience, I would define it as a compulsive, built-in power to sit in judgment upon myself. I say compulsive because the conscience functions without my asking it to function. It functions unbidden. In fact, sometimes the human conscience, we wish it would shut up in the wee hours of the night when it's telling us, you blew it, you blew it, you blew it, you sinned. Shut up, you've sinned, you shut up. You know, there are times when we would like to say, I didn't ask for you to tell me, but the conscience still speaks. It's a compulsive power. It's, as far as we know, not an element or a part of us in the sense of, uh, some part like our heart or our lungs or our liver or something. The conscience is a power that God has built into the human spirit. The power, the compulsive power to sit in judgment upon ourselves. And the Bible has a great deal to say about conscience. Uh, for example, in Romans chapter two, Paul says that the basic function of conscience is to either accuse or excuse. It either says you blew it, or it says good for you. See? It renders a judgment. It renders a judgment. Now, characteristically, conscience functions after the fact. Genesis chapter three, they sinned and they knew that they were naked. Conscience was awakened. Awaken after the fact. Now, I realize that if you look at the scriptures carefully, you see some evidence that once the will, and we're not going to take time to search this all out because that's a longer study than we're able to do today, but it seems biblically that once the will is set on a given course of action, the conscience can begin to speak, but basically the conscience functions after the fact. That's why, in spite of what Jiminy Cricket told Pinocchio, the conscience is not a reliable guide. Let your conscience be your guide is not a biblical statement, because the conscience tends to work after the fact. I involve myself in, in the formal realm of education, in college work, and a lot of times I meet people who like to compare formal education with the school of hard knocks, the school of experience. And I always remind them of one of the great differences between formal education and the school of hard knocks is that in formal education, you theoretically learn your lessons, and then you have a test, whereas in the school of hard knocks, characteristically, you have a test and you blow it, and then hopefully you learn your lesson, you see? And there's some interesting contrasts there. But the conscience is like that. It works after the fact, and thus is not to be considered a reliable guide per se. Another reason is, of course, because the scriptures teach us that there are all kinds of conscience problems that we can have. The Bible talks about a seared conscience. The Bible talks about a defiled conscience. You see, and if this judge sitting on the bench in your life is biased to begin with, the judgment rendered will not be according to the scriptures. There are a lot of ways to illustrate that. You recall that when we found, to our surprise, that the Auca Indians who had murdered the five martyrs didn't have any conscience about it. In fact, they thought they had done their people a favor. If you were taking care of your little grandchild and a mosquito came to bite to draw some of that precious little blood out of that tender little baby's arm, and you swatted that mosquito, would you have a conscience about it? No, you thought you'd done the child a favor, and that's the way they looked at the mar- the murder of these men. They had done their people a favor. They had swatted the mosquitoes that were coming, as they had learned from other Westerners to suck their blood. There's no conscience about that. Why? Because their societal code told them that these white foreigners are to be killed. They're evil. Do away with them. They will hurt you. Okay? Conscience doesn't always function right. Sometimes we manipulate our conscience. Uh, we weaken it through gradual, gradual, gradual indoctrination. You've heard the story of the frogs in the aquarium, and I understand that a number of people have tried this out. Put frogs in an aquarium with a puddle of water, and obviously they like to jump in and out of the water, but start heating the water. Now, if you put them in an aquarium with hot water, they've got enough sense to stay away from it because they're cold-blooded animals, and their instinct tells them if they jump into that, they will die. But if you just start heating cool water gradually, a degree an hour, a degree an hour, check it out, and the frogs will eventually die in the hot water that they would have had enough sense to avoid had it been hot to begin with. You see that gradual, gradual change was imperceptible. They didn't discern, and so it is many times culturally. There is that gradual, gradual bombardment of the mind. By the way, this is what our Western world has been going through in a very specific sense in our own generation. And I want to tell you, folks, the water is pretty hot. And the very kinds of things that even the late Doctor Francis Schaeffer was warning about have become a reality, almost before the grass is growing on his grave. The water is pretty hot, culturally. Even religiosity is there. You know that one of the gimmicks of religion is that you become so obsessed with and so scrupulous about certain religious things that you quiet your conscience about other flagrant kinds of obedience and disobedience. That's the problem with the Pharisees. That's what led to the, to the, to the Inquisition. Oh, the people who carried out those atrocious things in the Inquisition were terribly religious, awesomely disciplined in certain areas of their life religiously, but in other areas they could torture and murder people wantonly, seemingly without any conscience. Such is the ability in religiosity to distort the conscience. The conscience is not a reliable guide, and even in our society, where, you know, where we have all sorts of evidence. We, we, we have no-fault divorce, which allows us to, to violate our marriage vows without conscience. We have legalized gambling, which, which touches us in every dimension of life. We certainly feel it in our air. We not only have the national lottery, we have the state lottery, we've got the gambling boat. Think of that. Putting gambling boats in the Mississippi River. Anybody who knows American history knows there was celebration all up and down the Mississippi River a generation and a half ago when we got those wretched gambling boats off that river, and now we're putting them back on with zest. We're a nation of fools. We, we, we have come to, to, to do the most flagrant things without any seem- in fact, with great approval. And of course, the slaughter of unborn babes, it's become, it's become epidemic proportions in our nation, and it's not going to get any better, folks. It's not going to get any better. We are murdering children by the millions in our society, by the millions, and have no conscience about it, it seems. We have conscience problems in our Western world, which, of course, are related to the whole structure of our society. Sometimes it's the conscience of evil, on the other hand, and that's the conscience that keeps saying you're evil, you're evil, you're evil, like a broken record, and it won't shut up. And we've talked about that before here, I'm sure, but that's another strange problem of conscience. And then, of course, there's the reality contact of conscience, the kind of thing that Isaiah deals with in Isaiah chapter five, where he talks about the fact that we can so distract ourselves or opiate ourselves or amuse ourselves that our thinking process doesn't work right. It's a problem Isaiah said, for example, with drunkenness. When you're drunk, you're out of touch with God. What he tells Isaiah, uh, the people through Isaiah chapter five. What's wrong with getting drunk? What's wrong with being on an acid trip? If it takes you out of touch with reality, it takes you out of touch with God. And that's a pretty serious thing to do to yourself. And it leads to insensitivity, and it leads to the most flagrant of behavior. Go to your prison sometime, listen to people talk, find out how many of them will tell you that they're there because of things they did. Drunk, under the influence of drugs, in some way out of touch with reality. One of the great struggles of the human spirit, to learn to face life and to stay in touch with reality. And in all of this, there is some element of the issue of the discipline of mind. Big biblical subject. The discipline of our minds. Our world knows nothing of this. Keep your ear to the ground in our society without standards. We have lost the perspective of the discipline of mind. We've lost it. Paul says to Timothy, he says to all of us, God has not given us a spirit of trembling, of fear, of cowardice, the inability to face the realities of life, but he has given us a spirit of power and of love and of a well-ordered mind. Think, for example, just for a moment about those two passages, First Timothy three, then Titus one, where the qualifications of elders are given, just for one illustration. Sometime look at them. We won't do this now, just sort of getting your mind going in this direction here today. Sometime look through those qualifications of an elder and see how many of them have to do with the discipline of the mind. Uh, Paul talks about being committed in your marriage. He talks about being temperate, which means to have a balanced mind, a mind that can see and weigh both issues. Negatively, he talks about not being pugnacious, not the kind of person who lashes out at somebody who crosses you or who frustrates you, rather in control, gentle, uncontentious. He talks about not being self-willed. He talks about being not quick-tempered, no short fuse. He talks about not being pugnacious, not being a manipulator, a controller of others through your temperament. He talks about being sensible and fair-minded, and he summarizes it up in Titus chapter one by saying self-controlled. Sometime ponder that, the qualifications of elders, and see how many of these dimensions have to do with the discipline of mind. You see, in the book of Proverbs, we read that statement. A man without self-control is like a city with its walls broken down. Now, going back to the ancient times, you know that the cities were walls, and to live in a city that didn't have walls or live in a city that had broken down walls, was considered to be an alarming thing. By the way, you watch the building of walls in our Western society, literally, physically. It's going to become big business, folks. If you want to get in a good business, a sure business in a society without standards, get in the business of building walls or putting iron grates on windows or whatever you want to call security. It becomes very important in a society without standards. Because you see, in the ancient times, if you lived in a city that had its walls broken down, remember when they, when the exiles returned from captivity to Jerusalem? Oh, they rebuilt their homes and they rebuilt the temple, but boy, they were still in deep trouble. Why? The wall wasn't rebuilt. And then God raised up Nehemiah to come back and build the wall. Why? Because if you didn't have walls, you were vulnerable. They didn't have police with radios and fast cars and, and, and, uh, helicopters to scan an area and all of these other sophisticated things that we've developed in law enforcement. They didn't have all of these things. And every band of raiders could come and raid you and be off and lost in the wilderness, and you were, you were in trouble. And the only thing you could do to protect yourself was to build walls. Now the scriptures say, if you lack self-control, you're like that city without walls. You're vulnerable, you're a prey to every passing force, every idea, every new concept, every will of the human mind, every new opinion poll, and you're going here and here and here. You're going through life like a bullet ricocheting from rock to rock. Is that your life? That's this world. That's our society. A city without walls. No sense of self-discipline, no guidelines, no commitment to principle, which gives direction and meaning and stability to life, to say nothing of morality to life. A city without walls. In fact, the other proverb says, he who rules his own spirit is greater than he who conquers a city. Do you rule your own spirit? Our society doesn't teach you to do this. Our society teaches you just to let it go, and if it feels good to do it. In fact, we've even distorted Freudianism to make Freud teach us that never should you ever say no, never, never deny anything. It'll warp your personality. Just do it. Go right across the street over here and buy a t-shirt with that on. Just do it. The Bible says he who rules his own spirit, not ruled by it. You see, personality has three important dimensions: intellect, feeling, and will. And our society teaches us to let your feelings rule. If it feels good, do it. The scriptures teach us, no, the feelings are a part of reality. They give color, they give dimensions to life, but God did not give us feelings to govern us. The Bible teaches us that you're governed by your intellect and your will teamed up under God in obedience to God, and the feelings come along to give dimension and color to life, not to govern life. He who rules his own spirit, says the scriptures. But then you listen to second Timothy three, and Paul describes society at the end of this age, and you think you're reading the Chicago Tribune. Not the ruling of one's own spirit there, giving way to every human impulse, every fallen human impulse, lawlessness. Summarized in these ways, the lawless spirit does not expect authority, the lawless spirit does not obey authority, the lawless spirit does not respect authority. Do we see that in our society? Obviously. Is that a part of your life and mine as a believer? Have we lost that respect for authority that characterizes the committed Christian? Implications here for child rearing, folks. Implications for child rearing, if I understand my Bible, if a child does not learn to expect authority and to obey authority and to respect authority in one's home, when and how are you going to learn it? You won't learn it in our society. All you will learn to do is become angry and bitter because society clobbers you for violating whatever it thinks its present standards are, but our society does not teach or expect response to authority. Not geared that way. We've lost that. The matter of manipulating by others. Ha. No, the Bible says the Christian life is a self-controlled life under God. The Christian is not like that city without walls that is vulnerable to every idea. Uh, listen to the statement of Ephesians chapter four. Turn there for just a moment and listen to what Paul is concerned about. He says that you be no longer children tossed here and there by waves, carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness. And it's, you see what he's concerned about? He's concerned that Christians may be so vulnerable to every idea and every new thought and every new gimmick that comes along, that they're just like a cork bobbing on the waves of the ocean, rather than like a sailing vessel that, that has got some, some ballast and, and, and has got its sails set right and is going someplace. No, no, just bobbing around in the sea of opinion. Is that what your life is like? That's what our world is like. There's the issue of group pressure. Group pressure. Remember, folks, this world crucified our Lord, and if he were coming here this year in nineteen ninety three, uh our world would crucify him again. Don't kid yourself. Don't kid yourself. The world is no better now than it was in that first century. If he were to come today, our world would crucify him again. Our world is not a friend of grace. Paul says, God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of my Lord Jesus Christ, by whom I am crucified to the world, and the world is crucified to me. That's where the believer lives. The believer lives at Calvary. He uses the perfect tense of the verb, I am crucified. It com- it talks to action that is complete in the past, and its effect remains in the present. What Paul is saying in that beautiful, concise way is when Christ was crucified, I was crucified, and lo and behold, I am still on the cross. He isn't, but I am. I stand crucified with Christ. That's where the Christian is. And the same world that crucified our Lord wants to squeeze your mind into its mold today, and if you don't succumb, you will feel the brunt. I promise you. And I don't think we have seen the worst yet. I'm not a crepe hanger, but I want to tell you, the world is not a friend of grace. And unfortunately, even among the people of God, the scriptures make it clear from Genesis to Revelation that that characteristically in moral and spiritual things, the majority is wrong. And I don't care whether you start in Eden, where the odds were three to one. Adam and Eve al- aligned with Satan and re- disobeyed the word of God. What's the odds? Three to one. Who was right? You know who was right. The spies came out of Israel. What was the, what were the odds? Ten to two. Even the kids know that. Twelve men went to spy out King. Ten were? Come on. Two were? Who does the nation believe, the majority report or the minority report? Majority report. Who was right? Anywhere you dip into the scriptures with moral and spiritual things, unfortunately, even among the professing people of God, you can't set your sails by a public opinion poll, folks. If you do, you'll end up on the rocks. I promise you that on the authority of the word of God, whether in your personal life or your society. We've got to tune into the word of God. God has spoken. We're people of the book. We're people who are followers of the one who said, I came not to do my own thing, but the will of him who sent me. Are we not? Are you? Am I? Who's calling the shots in your life? Do you live with your conscience subject to the authority of the word of God? When God speaks, do we tremble in obedience and reverence? That's where we live, Christians, if we're biblical people. That's not our world. It's not our world. And increasingly, we are finding that the life of obedience to the word of God is farther and farther from the drumbeats of our society. A society without standards, like a ship without a rudder. And that's the way the world is headed. Folks, I want to tell you, it's high time that we get back to the books, that we spend time in the scriptures, that we meditate upon the word of God, that we let it saturate our conscience so that we can say with Paul, my conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit. Paul sees his conscience as literally surrounded by and engulfed by the Holy Spirit. How does that happen? It happens when we listen to the voice of the Spirit of God in the pages of the scripture he has given us. And that is the life that brings honor to God. And he who rules his own spirit is greater than he who conquers a city or wins a Persian Gulf War, or whatever else we do to emulate a great man. He who rules his own spirit, says the scripture, is greater than that. Will you prove it in your life? With a godly, self-disciplined life under God? And not be tossed around by every idea and every crafty, deceitful thing that man comes up with. Who calls the shots in your life? Is it God through his word? Or is it the drumbeats of our society? Father, help us, we pray. Help us to be biblical people. We carry our Bibles, we memorize them, we profess allegiance to the living God. Help us, we pray, to be those whose conscience is subject to the authority of the word of God, whose lives are com-