Dana Kohlman - Class 3: Christadelphian Expertise

Automatically transcribed. Accuracy is good but not perfect, and words are sometimes wrong. Trust the audio over the text.

1. 0:00

   This is the Saanich Peninsula Ecclesia's study day, February study day, 2014. Our speaker is Brother Dana Coleman. His third class is entitled Christadelphian Expertise. Brother Dana. I just wanted to touch on a couple things that I forgot to tell you about. What I was trying to show you here was when we talk about higher order, the data is irrefutable.

2. 0:38

   This is a child reading, okay? This is a child reading and talking about the high points and the low points in the text, right? So when we talk about higher order, that's what we mean. I mean, it's real. It affects the brain differently, right?

3. 0:55

   The other thing that I wanted to say was who knows what 9 times 7 is? Just put up your hand. Who knows what 9 times 7 is? Keep your hands up, please. Who knows what 9 times 7 is? Myra, what's 9 times 7? I'll let a younger person say it. No, Myra, just let it out. It's okay.

4. 1:15

   I'm sorry? It's 63. Good for you. Who else knows what 9 times 7 is? Mark? So then it's 63. Good. So does anyone else know what 9 times 7 is? Do you know what it is at the back there? It's 63? That's remarkable. That's great. Good. We do this all the time. We do this all the time.

5. 1:36

   We have people put hands up. It is the single most important bit of learning that I've done in the last 5 or 10 years. Understanding assessment and instruction means you know at all times what your audience or whether or not your audience understands what you're saying. So if I was going to make one single recommendation to you who are Sunday school teachers and even those of you who are Bible class leaders, I would invest in some white boards and markers.

6. 2:04

   And I would give my lesson. I would say, okay, up to now, what are the three things that we've been talking about? And that forces everyone to tell whether or not they're engaged. We have to absolutely eliminate the notion of hands up. So who knows the three outcomes that we've talked about so far, right?

7. 2:22

   I mean, what's the point? Once one person says it, everybody knows it. But if everyone is required to respond, that's a level of engagement we just never had in schools, right? So in instruction, your job is to find out what your students know right now and whether or not they're following the lesson.

8. 2:39

   This isn't going to help anyone. But if everyone's forced to show you what they know, that's a very different thing. So those are two things that I wanted to share with you. So you're saying everybody has a white board? Everybody has a white board. Everybody has a marker. And then there's no debate about whether or not people are listening.

9. 3:01

   Does that make sense? And you simultaneously raise your hand. You're trying to say, show me, right? And then I can just stand here. I can know, okay, if Uncle Donaldson's slacking, I will know, right? Right away. I wish I had said 74. Yeah, you could have. I was ready for anything. All right, so up to now, we talked about essentially this, this first question.

10. 3:21

    Look, brothers and sisters, if we don't know well what our first thing is, we're guaranteed to send the wrong messages, right? We know that knowing well the first question is a predictor of instructional failure and a predictor of instructional success. We're learning the difference between effective outcomes and objective outcomes. It's easy to teach seven times nine.

11. 3:42

    It's harder to teach love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind. We know the role of teaching and being. If we're not nice people, ultimately, we don't get the relationships, and it's the relationships that lead to the higher order of learning. Next, we ask, okay, then, what is our first question?

12. 3:59

    What is the one thing that we do? And I would say, unequivocally, for me, the message of Scripture is God wants us to be free. We don't have to back away from this message. We don't have to be bitter people. We don't have to live in comparativeness and malice. We don't have to let the flesh prevail in our lives.

13. 4:17

    We talked about assuring that our children are Bible students, that the quality of guidance of Scripture was irrefutable. And then we talked about getting on with the real relationship of the Word. And then we talked about all the people over time. Some of them have spent 20 years in these settings and didn't get down to the hope of the teachings of Jesus.

14. 4:42

    Some people missed out. They're so self-engrossed. They're still spending time looking at what that person's doing and how that person made them feel. And I understand that. But that is the plague of the flesh. And that is just a wicked thing. So once you get in for a while, you learn the ethic of dealing with other people's differences and tolerating them.

15. 5:03

    Second question, or class two, we talked about the five questions of instruction. And class three now, this is a place I'm both really comfortable with and really not. Now, if you remember, Mark and Melissa and I had this discussion six months ago. I haven't had the two years that it would broadly take to get well armed to take on this top of the construction along the way.

16. 5:29

    I was thinking about what is the role of the flesh in Scripture? How do we understand the things of Scripture or the things of the flesh in Scripture? And I was really, I'm really comfortable talking with that. I'm uncomfortable because there's a lot of things that we could talk about. So I'm hoping that in 40 minutes or less, 30 minutes or less, that we will get through as much of this as possible.

17. 5:50

    So we don't often, brothers and sisters, refer to Christadelphian expertise. And we never, ever in our community talk about our expertise. But I would say singularly that we know the job that we have. We know our one thing. Our one thing we know is to manifest God's character always, deliberately and carefully. We know that unequivocally.

18. 6:18

    And yet, we know from Scripture the very specific defaults that present this or prevent this. And the power this gives us, brothers and sisters, is immeasurable. Knowing the weaknesses we have, knowing that Scripture confirms the weaknesses we have is a great, great power. We know the expectations of us. We know our weaknesses.

19. 6:45

    And we certainly know, for example, the role of trial in our refinement. For example, we know one of our defaults is when we're in trial, we go, oh, God must be mad at me. Oh, we don't have any trial? God must like me. We're that fickle, right? And we have an expertise about trial that prevents that, right?

20. 7:09

    So, this understanding of the flesh is the root of the freedom that we experience. We don't take loosely, brothers and sisters, phrases of Scripture. We know the heart is deceitful above all things. We know when it says the heart is deceitful above all things. It means above everything else, the heart is deceitful.

21. 7:32

    And that's a great thing to know. It knows. But ultimately it says we actually can't trust our own thinking. We actually have to come back to Scripture or we'll simply quite readily do our own thinking. We know all of the emotions and all of the feelings that come with being a servant of the Most High Gaurag.

22. 7:51

    We know about fear and we know about doubt. We know about anxiety. We know all of those things are characteristics of the flesh. And we know that the light of the truth would mute them. We know the divinely directed characteristics that we are to employ. We know about the place of decency in our lives.

23. 8:11

    We know about reasonableness. There's a word we don't toss around very often. But reasonableness is a maker or breaker. We know about forbearance down in Colossians 3.13 where we make allowances for each other's faults. And we know the role of consciousness. I don't know much about Buddhism but I was reading this article about Buddhism and they said something that really echoed with Scripture with me.

24. 8:34

    In Buddhism there's no such thing as unconsciousness. Right? In Buddhism, I don't know if it's true or not but it's what I read. In Buddhism there's no such thing as unconsciousness. And that's our role. As believers we're immensely careful about what we're thinking about. We're immensely conscious about what we think about. Brothers and sisters, Psalm 103 verse 14 says, He knows how we are formed.

25. 9:01

    He remembers that we are dust. Right? Great reminder of Scripture. This is a relief for me. Because knowing what I know about the flesh, I would do like many people do. We'd give up. I can't deal with it. I'm going to be doing this over and over again for the next X number of years.

26. 9:18

    I'm going to be alive. I'm reminded that God knows the package we're dealing with. And that to me, brothers and sisters, is expertise. That is really, really great insight. Brothers and sisters, along the way of this study that we did, and when I say we did, we did it with our ecclesia. That is, generally I led this study but we had a lot of discussion along the way or some discussion along the way.

27. 9:41

    And we asked two crucial questions. First of all, what does Scripture mean when it says only evil continually? You know, it comes up twice. One is Genesis 6 verse 5 and another time it comes up in Genesis 8. And long and short of it, it says, God saw that the heart of men or the imagination of men's hearts was only evil continually.

28. 10:00

    And I was going, okay. We were going, what does that mean? That phrase, only evil continually. The next thing we asked is, okay, so say we knew that, could we actually make up a mind map? Could we actually enumerate what the characteristics of the flesh are? Like, are there 19 characteristics? Are there 248 characteristics?

29. 10:20

    What do we actually mean when we talk about the flesh? And so we went down this road and it led to a whole bunch of discussions. And I have to warn you that I've started this discussion as a work in progress with, in another setting when we were doing studies. I actually managed to offend some people because they thought I was saying things that, well, they took offense, okay?

30. 10:43

    And what I really want to be clear is, I did this open-mindedly. I don't have a lot of the deep-seated background that many brothers and sisters have in the truth. So I did it with knowing or drawing conclusions from what I read in Scripture. So some of the things might be a little bit controversial to you.

31. 11:03

    I wouldn't know. Honestly, I wouldn't know. I don't know what the controversy or the thinking is collectively about this. I'm just giving you what I came up with. First thing that I came up with, or I started to understand about Scripture, and I didn't know this to begin with, and I should have, that God is in control, right?

32. 11:18

    When we talk about the narrative of Scripture, God is in control from the beginning to end. So whatever else happens, in Genesis, when the narrative follows the fall of man, I always thought that God was really surprised by this. It's just not true. God knew the idea of redemption right from day one.

33. 11:41

    And, you know, for a long time, I was just this fuzzy information that I had. Oh, maybe God knew. No. Now I'm emphatic. God 100% knew what the outcome was going to be. I mean, mathematically, it's simple. It's only too possible, right? So God being the God that he is, he certainly knew that men were going to fail.

34. 11:59

    So I'm reminded that I should have known that because, of course, many would argue the most important verse in Scripture is God created the heavens and earth. So everything that we have here is a byproduct of the flesh, which reminded me of this. Here's a reason for the flesh, all right? So God, in his inimitable wisdom, provided the flesh.

35. 12:22

    Now, those are tough words for some people. But God knew this was going to happen. God knew that we would need redemption. And I have to say again, that gives me immense relief. And I hope, by extension, this gives you some relief as well. And I know this. I know God knew about this because there's some anomalies in the very good state.

36. 12:45

    Okay, so you ask yourself, when did the fall occur? Okay? During what time period did the fall occur? Now, I think most of us understand it. It fell during that period of time where Scripture says everything was very good. So while man was very good. Now, listen to this. While man was very good, he was able to parse the word of God.

37. 13:11

    Okay, very good state. And he's going, or as the account has it, yea, hath God said, or did God really say? They bought into that thinking, whether we're talking about Adam or Eve. That's in the very good state, which was a signal to me that, whoa, we're not in a very good state.

38. 13:29

    But what chance do we have? So God in his creation in the very good state allows people to parse his words and to challenge him. And that was a real eye-opener for me. I went, oh, yeah. Now I really understand more because it confirms for me what chance of success are you and I going to have if in the very good state people parse the word of God.

39. 13:56

    Right? We're in a clearly a different state now. Where our conclusions were broad. First, we would say creation isn't an accident. The flesh is not a mistake. It's part of creation. God knew we were going to fail. And the proof is really easy to find. Really easy to find. The message of redemption is deeply embedded in scripture.

40. 14:28

    Immediately upon the fall, we see the seed of the woman introduced. Immediately upon the fall, the seed of the woman is introduced. Here is Isaiah. I am the Lord and there is none else. I form the light and create darkness. I make peace and create evil. I, the Lord, do all these things.

41. 14:51

    Now intellectually, I knew this verse. I knew about this verse. But what it reminded me when I started to put together what I was thinking about Genesis was our God is a really complex God. He is hard to understand at some times. Looking at scripture is a difficult understanding. But it further confirmed was my suspicion was that God had redemption in the mind at creation.

42. 15:15

    Here is Romans 8 verse 9. Creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected to it in hope. Here is a confirmation that God was actively involved in the creation and the frustration process. We know this about Jesus from 1 Peter. He was chosen before the creation of the world.

43. 15:42

    In Hebrews 1 verse 12. His son whom he appointed of all things, by whom also he made the world. We are reminded that Jesus is the central thing for everything. So God had this in mind. This is the giveaway. Romans 11 verse 32. For God has bound all men over to disobedience that might have mercy upon them all.

44. 16:07

    God knew, for example, Israel was weak. Look at the last one. Galatians 3 verse 8. Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles and announce the gospel in advance to Abraham. I don't know why I was so vague about this. But what that allowed me to do was to understand that God fully understands the nature that we have.

45. 16:33

    And I think this is a little counterpoint to maybe my Catholic background where maybe I learned at one point or maybe we thought that Jesus was necessary to introduce the idea of sin to God. Right? I mean, I'm sure it's not thinking that you would do. But that thinking is out there. That's just not necessary at all.

46. 16:50

    God knew the flesh right from the beginning. We are not permanently able to sustain the laws of God in our lives. And while it seems cheeky of me to say, well, that's a relief for me, that is actually the case. I can understand now that I will never be able to master perfectly the laws of God.

47. 17:12

    So then the second question was, okay, what does only evil continually mean? All right? These are some introductory points around these questions. Well, this is where I caused offense with one of my friends. Not real offense. We all got over it. But the word in Genesis 6 verse 5 is raw. And when I say Genesis 6 verse 5, this is the verse that says, and God saw that the imagination of men's heart was only evil continually.

48. 17:41

    That word is actually evil. Okay? There's no equivocation. I'm not backing away. Men are evil. The observation that God made is that men are evil. But that word is nowhere near the same word as what we understand in the Western culture as evil. Okay? And what I'm saying is this does not mean solely malevolent.

49. 18:03

    Okay? It would be easy. If we were just solely mean all the time, well, that would be really easy. We're way more complex than that. We're a mixture of wanting to do good, having corrupt influences, having corrupt motives, coming through, even though we're not thinking right, sometimes doing the right thing, bumping into goodness, finding ourselves in the wrong place at the wrong time, acting improperly, and then in the same instance, on a different day, we could act rightly.

50. 18:31

    The long and the short is we're such a mess of characteristics that it would be really easy to say we are only evil, evil as in malevolent continually. So I did some digging, and I looked at a lot of the scripture that related to evil, and that's what I mean about our Western notion of evil, this slide here, where it just shows you that evil in the Western sense is the intent to harm, the intent to do wrong.

51. 19:03

    And that isn't our characteristic all the time. Again, our problem is we aren't able to sustain godliness, and even if we know about godliness, we're not able to do it consistently. And so that characteristic of evil is different than my previous thinking, which was essentially that, well, we're just evil. Let's not talk about it.

52. 19:29

    So doctrinally speaking, we come to that verse and we go, oh, we're just evil. Uh-uh. Shrug. It is more than that. We are more complex than solely malevolent. I'm not taking away from the fact that the word is evil. Great. It's evil. But the characteristic of evil that you and I carry is way more complex than just malevolent.

53. 19:51

    So, again, this is three crosses squished into one, but I would give you this. One way to understand this evil is that we have no comparable verse, all right? Now, I'm just wrapping up this definition of evil. But we have no comparable verse when Cain and Abel are having the discussion, and when Cain or Abel says to Cain, when you do right, will it not be accepted?

54. 20:18

    And when you do wrong, sin is crouching at the door. Well, we have no verse in Scripture. There's no verse that says, when you do right, righteousness is crouching at the door and it desires to have you. There's no automaticity of righteousness. And that is a huge distinction. Not solely malevolent, but it's not...

55. 20:39

    Well, it's simply not solely malevolent, right? So we have no verse that really compares to the aggressive nature of the adversary. And we've quoted this before, be alert and sober-minded. Your enemy, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. We don't have any verse that animates that characteristic as much as that.

56. 21:05

    Here's another one, Numbers 15, 39. Most people know this. It's in Numbers 15, 39, we're told we follow the harlotry to which our own hearts and our own eyes are inclined. That there is a natural inclination to follow things that are not godly. So this is what I'm going to suggest to you.

57. 21:25

    When Scripture says, only evil continually, what I think that means and what works in my mind and I can sustain throughout Scripture is, we are only not godly continually. We just cannot sustain consistently godliness. That is the message of that. Now, we might also be solely malevolent, some of us. We might also be a mixture of that malevolence and some good.

58. 21:54

    All right? Now, one of the ways I could say that I know we're not solely malevolent is at some point it was recorded of Abraham. Abraham staggered not in unbelief, believing that God had the power to do what was promised. We know Noah walked with God and Noah found grace with God. Here are men who are just under the same umbrella you and I are, but they were able to overcome whatever their malevolent nature and they were able to find this accord with God.

59. 22:25

    All right? Here's Matthew 7, 11. Maybe this is, excuse me, Mark 7, 11. If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in Heaven give good gifts to you, to those that ask him? The point there is if it's speaking to that mixed nature of what evil is.

60. 22:44

    Solely malevolent people can't give good gifts to their children. So I think Scripture's understanding of evil is a little bit different. The second part of this is the second question, which is, okay, I understand a little better what only evil continually is. And I know for certain, I know for certain it is not solely malevolent.

61. 23:07

    Right? Yep. I just wanted to add, because we've learned better. Discussion, yeah. Sorry. That at our Thursday lunchtime class, we talked about that passage, that exact passage you're talking about from Genesis. And Brother Malcolm Shurton pointed out almost exactly what you're saying, because he says that Jesus comments on that in Matthew 24, when he says they were eating and drinking and marrying and giving in marriage.

62. 23:36

    So it wasn't like everything was total violence, totally wicked, evil. But they were doing things, but they did not have God in mind when they were doing those things. So it's important to support what you're saying. Thank you. That's helpful. Okay. So the second question was, okay, what exactly are the characteristics of the flesh?

63. 23:57

    And this is pretty standard. If I was thinking, okay, if I had to show someone, first principle-wise, what are the characteristics of flesh, here is Mark 7, 21, what comes out of a person is what defiles them. For it is from within, out of a person's heart, that evil thoughts come, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance, and folly, all these evils come from inside and defile a person.

64. 24:19

    Well, there's a perfect inventory of 12 things that are our character. So I was thinking about this. The only problem with these words, and I have total understanding of these words. I know what they mean. And I can see them at work in my life. They didn't really speak to my habituation of weakness.

65. 24:41

    Right? They kind of do, and they kind of don't. So then I looked a little bit deeper in scripture, and this is what I found. Now, in order to understand this, okay, what I found, I need you to listen to a little story. Now, before I teach you this story is, you have to understand what I'm asking.

66. 24:59

    I'm asking, okay, what exactly is a precise inventory of the works of the flesh or the heart that is only evil continually? I can go to the marks, and I can find those 12 things, okay? They are absolutely true. But do they fully extend the flesh as we know it? And I'm going to suggest to you that some of the patterns I learned in my life or observed in my life weren't entirely encapsulated by those passages.

67. 25:32

    I want you to also think about this notion of, at the top it says, defaults or patterns of worship. What I'm going to suggest is, there are some default characteristics that really are patterns of worship. That is, if you go with the principle that is, you are slaves to whatever masters you, whatever you're thinking about, well, that's the thing you worship.

68. 25:52

    If you are totally wanting the acknowledgement of people around you, and you want the approval of men, you always want that in your head. That's your temple, right? If you want money all the time, that's your temple. If you're in bitterness all the time, that's the thing you worship, right? So I just want to suggest that these are default forms of worship.

69. 26:17

    These are patterns that we fall back into, and I'm going to explain it by this little story. And you may have heard this. So there's two fish swimming along, okay? Swimming along, swimming along, swimming along, having just a pleasant morning. And another fish shows up from the opposite direction. They're swimming towards, and they're passing each other.

70. 26:34

    And the single fish is passing the two fish. And the single fish says to the two fish, morning, boys. How's the water? And the boys swim along, and they say, fine, fine, thanks. So they keep swimming along, swimming along. And a couple of minutes later, they look at each other. They stop. They say, what the heck is water?

71. 26:56

    Right? So what I'm going to suggest to you is that I used to look at these verses, or that verse in Mark, and say, okay, these 12 things. I got this covered. Okay, I'm not doing this. I'm not doing that. I'm pretty good. But I want to suggest to you that this evil nature, this thing that is in us, and our ability to express it and understand it from Scripture is real expertise.

72. 27:18

    That is, most people don't understand our nature to this extent. The first and foremost is we forget. You don't think of that being as a characteristic of evil. But we forget. Going along, you can have all the involvement you want in ecclesial activities. When the chips are down, and the baby's screaming, and there's someone at the door, and the phone is ringing, that's a perfect opportunity to forget.

73. 27:44

    Right? Right? Even when things are peaceful, we forget. Deuteronomy 8.11. Be careful you do not forget the Lord your God, failing to observe his laws and decrees. 2 Peter 1.12. Wherefore, I will not be negligent to put you always in remembrance of these things, though ye know them, and be established to them in the present truth.

74. 28:06

    Yea, I think it meet as long as I am in this earthly tabernacle to stir you up by putting you in remembrance. So we have this principle at work. And it's easy to find evidence that we forget. We have a need. And this doesn't come up out of the inventory from Mark. We have a need for constant reminding.

75. 28:29

    The second one, as you can see there, is that distracted, muddled, and I left out there, it should say double-minded thinking. Okay? Here's scripture reminding us about the call for clear-mindedness. Where it says, on one hand, this calls for clear-mindedness. In 1 Peter 1.13, it says, therefore, your minds must be clear and ready for action.

76. 28:50

    In 1 Peter 4.7, it says, be clear-minded and self-controlled. In 2 Corinthians, it says, be of one mind versus the double-minded characteristic that we default to. Our pattern of worship, brothers and sisters, I'm suggesting is to be a perpetual fence-sitter. Did God speak to man? Did God not speak to man? Hmm, I don't know.

77. 29:13

    I'm just going to stay here in between. Right? There is a characteristic that is in us that will quite happily keep us on the fence.

78. 29:30

    How long will you quit between two opinions? Remember that phrase from Elijah. How long, Israel, will you quit between two opinions? And it seems to me that in the narrative of Israel, there's two really great messages. Message number one is, do not do as they do. And message number two is, these are the things you should fully expect to do.

79. 29:55

    Message number one, do not do as they do. Message number two, these are the things you should fully expect to do. Do not be surprised, brothers and sisters, when you fall back into the same patterns of worship that people have done for thousands of years. And this third one is a little bit more insidious.

80. 30:13

    And this one is constant and willing deception. All right? Second Thessalonians 2.10 has it, all the ways the flesh deceives those who are perishing. And it captures this notion that there are whole bunches of ways that deceive us. And I'm going to suggest to you that the flesh deceives, it is an active agent of deception, it is systemic, and honestly, I suggest the flesh prefers confusion.

81. 30:40

    I'm going to read some passages. Just listen, see if you can pull out the pattern. Here is Isaiah 30.10. They say to the seers, see no more visions. And to the prophets, give us no more visions of what is right. Tell us pleasant things, prophesy illusions. Here's Jeremiah 5.12. They have lied about the Lord.

82. 31:01

    They said, he will do nothing. No harm will come to us. We will never seem sword or famine. Here's Jeremiah 23.17. They keep saying to those who despise me, the Lord says, you will have peace. And to all who follow the stubbornness of their hearts, they say, no harm will come to you.

83. 31:18

    Here's Ezekiel 13.10. Because they lead my people astray, saying peace when there is no peace. And because when a flimsy wall is built, they cover it with whitewash. In Jeremiah 18, it says, but they will reply, it's no use. We will continue in our own plans. Each of us will follow the stubbornness of his own heart.

84. 31:36

    Ezekiel says, you have profaned me among my people for a few handfuls of barley and scraps of bread. By lying to my people who listen to lies, you have killed those who should not have died and spared those who have not lived. And Micah, if a liar and deceiver comes and says, I will prophesy you plenty of wine and beer, he would be just the prophet for this people.

85. 31:57

    What I'm suggesting, brothers and sisters, is in us, part of this only evil continuum, part of our characteristic. And if we sit down to create an inventory, we cannot deny that we prefer the lie. That it's way easier at times to simply indulge that God actually doesn't mean exactly what he says. For the longest time, I thought the issue in Genesis, I thought I had it wrapped.

86. 32:23

    I thought it was, the issue in Genesis was there was a lie, and the lie was believed. That was floating around my head for a long time. Then I read, I think it's Alpis Israel, and what John Thomas says there is he says, his summary of Genesis is that God means exactly what he says.

87. 32:47

    That people have a difficult time believing that God means exactly what he says. And so that characterizes that desire to listen to the pleasant visions, the wanting not to have the truth for us. The next one is distorted values. And this is really simple. Broadly is a pattern almost perfectly in our lives.

88. 33:12

    We put the stuff that is least important at the top and most important at the bottom. We are plagued that we cannot sustain the value of the laws of God. Why do you reverence mere men that you so forget the Lord your maker? Why do you reverence mere men that you forget the Lord your maker?

89. 33:38

    We put the esteem of our colleagues and friends and neighbors so high that it subverts the principles of God. Here is an example of the flesh deceiving, the active distortion of values. Here is 1 Samuel 8.20. No, sorry. No, but there shall be a king over us that we also may be like all the nations.

90. 34:02

    Israel actually said that. No, we want a king over us so that we can be like everyone else. It actually says that we might also be like the nations, that our king may judge us and go out before us and fight battles. And this example of Israel being forefront in the mind of God and God actively demonstrating his power to them.

91. 34:21

    And they were looking around going, well, it would be great to have a palace where a king was and we could go up and we could pay tribute and things like that. And so it's really easy in Scripture to see that we will always have distorted values. By nature, we value wealth. And if we value wealth, we'll always feel poor.

92. 34:42

    By nature, we worship beauty. And if we worship beauty, we'll always feel somewhat unattractive. If we worship IQ, we'll always feel inferior. We will, when you value things, you will never have enough. We'll always be comparative and we'll always be competitive. We replace the word of God and the principles of God with human traditions so easily.

93. 35:09

    Galatians 4 and 9. Why do you go back to the weak and beggarly elements? Do you wish to be enslaved all over again? And the next one is the righteousness earned is pretty simple in the sense that this is following a Roman study where we were reminded that it's impossible to be sinless.

94. 35:29

    Knowing what we know about the flesh, it is impossible, mathematically impossible, to be sinless. The Roman study reminds us we cannot earn salvation. And the Jewish nation thought otherwise. They thought if we did A, B, C, and D, we would be righteous. It's not physically possible, brothers and sisters. Eventually, you're going to get exhausted.

95. 35:48

    Eventually, you're going to get distracted. Eventually, you're going to give in to confusion. Those things are at play always. And here's the rub. It's not the criteria. The criteria is not sinlessness. For in the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed, a righteousness by faith from first to last. That is the message of Jesus.

96. 36:11

    The criteria is not that you're perfect. There would only be four people left in this room if that were the case. The long and the short of it is that that is not the criteria, right? So to be reminded that that is the message of God. God knows our flesh. He knows that we're weak.

97. 36:30

    He knows we're going to devolve to this. Our expertise is that we know it as well. And we can put it in the forefront of our mind. We don't have to be petty people. We don't have to be malicious or bitter. We don't have to be comparative. We don't have to hold down the flesh.

98. 36:46

    Ladies and gentlemen, the last and probably most important is anxiety. And anxiety is just one of those plagues of the flesh. And I know everyone in here has felt it. Anyone who tells you that they haven't been afraid at some point or anxious at one point, I think it's nigh impossible. Some people have it more than others.

99. 37:06

    I recognize that. There are massive increases in children. We'll talk about that another time. It is a much studied topic. But I read a lot about it. And it's best summarized as this. Like if you ask, okay, what is anxiety? It is best summarized, I think, as this. It is best summarized as fear has entered the subconscious.

100. 37:31

     That's it. We've got fear in us. It's in bread on us. It's in our DNA. We're going to be edgy and uneasy if we allow ourselves to be. Foregone conclusion. The number one phrase uttered by God when God is quoted in Scripture is, Stop being afraid. It's translated fear not. Stop being afraid.

101. 37:58

     For God has come to refine you. Not to condemn you. God has come to make you better. Here's Matthew 13, 22. The seed that fell among the thorns were those who heard the word and are choked by life's worries. Or in some translations, the anxieties of life. That is, Jesus goes to the trouble of proffering a parable that delineates people who are accepted into the kingdom and not accepted in the kingdom and are discounted because they're simply overwhelmed by the anxieties of life.

102. 38:35

     And that's not just, oh, I don't know if the sky is going to fall in. That's, hmm, I better work overtime so I can have a nicer car so my neighbor can think I got it all put together. Right? And that is the plague of our thinking. And we know this, brothers and sisters.

103. 38:49

     We experience it day to day. It's like we have this built-in expertise. Here is the clencher anxiety passage for me. Okay, here's the penultimate clencher passage. In Matthew 6, 32, it talks about worry. Remember the phrase worry where he says, okay, why are you worrying about what you're going to wear and what you're going to eat?

104. 39:12

     Pagans seek after those things. Okay, that's his phrase. Pagans. Ignorant people seek after those things. Uninformed people, stupid people spend time thinking about. That's the word in the Greek. The long and the short of it is ignorant people spend time worrying about this. We don't have to. We don't have to worry about those things.

105. 39:33

     We've been freed from that. All right. This is on the lines of fear and anxiety. The most pronounced fear any human being has is rejection. Right? It's the number one fear everyone has. It's not, it's up there with public speaking. But think of this. Remember the phrase Israel uttered. That way, that we might also be like all the nations.

106. 40:00

     We're looking around going, oh, we have the God as, our God is our king. God was delivered, had delivered them. He'd established that he was looking out for them. He's looking around and going, oh, we'd way rather have a king like all these other nations. They didn't want to miss out. They didn't want to be rejected from the club of the world.

107. 40:17

     And they said, whoa, but set a king over us. Right? And they did. And God did. He set over them. Think of what Deuteronomy says. Here is a nation that has rejected God. God has endured their, tolerated their ignorance and given them a king over them. And did it go well for them?

108. 40:39

     Here is Deuteronomy 8. Sorry, 28. Among the, sorry, this is Deuteronomy 28, 65. And among these nations thou shalt find no ease. Neither shall the sole of thy foot have rest. And the Lord shall give thee a trembling heart, an anxious mind, and failing eyes. Imagine that. They chose the nations of the world.

109. 41:02

     And God is saying on the front end, among those nations shall thou found no ease. Neither shall the sole of thy foot have rest. But the Lord shall give thee there a trembling heart, an anxious mind, and failing eyes. The anxiety, brothers and sisters, is the world and the flesh creeping in. So you can see our list of default.

110. 41:25

     These are patterns of worship because we spend so much time forgetting and being confused. Allowing ourselves to be deceived. Thinking that we're righteous or we're earning our righteousness. Distorting our hierarchies of values and fear and anxiety. These are places that we go willingly.

111. 41:48

     Knowing what we know. Knowing the list from Mark. Knowing the default patterns, brothers and sisters. Don't you think as ecclesial members and as community members, we can stop being surprised when people around us act as they always have. Knowing we have this level of expertise about what is going in. The only evil continually heart.

112. 42:14

     Don't you think it's time we stop being surprised when people acted foolishly before us. When people were less than honest or less than genuine. When people were malicious or when people were unkind. This knowledge insulates us from that. We get so removed from, we can remove ourselves so fully from the level of engagement that darkness of heart that is looming out there can provide for us.

113. 42:42

     We have got to stop being surprised when people act as they always have. Scripture says for a reason, be sober, be vigilant. Tough words. Be sober, be vigilant. Your adversary, the devil, as a roaring lion walketh around seeking whom he may devour. Thanks very much.