07-27-14 The Lie That Binds Pt 2

We stopped in the middle of our study last week

and I want to pick up this morning

right where we left off.

But a full week of real life has gone by

since we were last together,

so it would be good for us

to get our minds back into this study

with just a few minutes of review.

For the past several months

we have been studying the way in which

our Lord Jesus Christ

brings freedom into the lives

of those of us who place ourselves

into His hands.

In the broadest context

our study has broken down into two major sections:

the freedom our Lord offers us from the Law,

and the freedom our Lord offers us from sin.

Most recently we have been studying

the way in which He makes freedom from sin a growing reality in our lives.

And last week we spent the morning

looking at what I told you

I believe to be the most powerful single deception Satan has

in his attempts to keep God’s people in continued bondage to immorality.

Every time a Christian is pulled into immorality

there will be some element of this lie

active in the believer’s life.

Last week we spent much of our time

talking about the way in which

our God has created us

with a wide variety of needs.

We have physical needs,

emotional needs,

psychological needs,

mental needs,

spiritual needs, and so on.

These needs in themselves are in no way sinful,

nor are they the result of sin.

In God’s original design

He created Adam with all the needs we experience,

and then He placed Adam into a world

in which all of those needs could be perfectly met,

and showed him how to meet them.

Once sin entered into the human race, however,

it separated us from the One

who understood our needs perfectly,

and who could meet those needs,

or show us how to meet them.

Our separation from God

left us with only ourselves as a resource

for figuring out how life works

and how our needs can be met.

And even more devastating,

it left us with both a fundamental distrust of God,

and a hostility toward Him

that drives us to reject the very answers we need.

When we come to Christ in faith,

placing our lives into His hands,

trusting His death for our sins,

that spirit battle between us and our God is ended,

and one of the fringe benefits of our divine homecoming is that now,

through His Word

and through His Spirit,

He begins re-educating us in the truth,

leading us into an understanding

of how our needs can be met.

We saw last week that

when our God offers us

the moral framework revealed to us in His Word,

He is providing for us a clear,

beautiful presentation of how our human needs can be met.

This protective moral framework

enables us to live within a deeply corrupt human society

without suffering the destructive consequences

that immorality always brings into our lives.

Simply put,

one of the fringe benefits of being a child of God

is that we get the instruction manual.

We know how life works,

or at least we can know.

But of course, there is a problem.

We saw last week that

when we come to Christ

we come fully pre-programmed.

We bring with us a whole bunch of need-meeting techniques from our past life,

techniques that didn’t work all that well for us in the past,

but techniques that are now firmly established in our memories,

and our minds,

and our whole emotional make-up.

And it is those learned responses within us

that set us up for the great LIE

Satan seeks to use against the people of God.

And this is the lie -

Satan seeks to convince the Christian

that God’s moral framework

is not a protection for us,

but rather a barrier that keeps us from the things we must have

in order to meet our needs.

We didn’t take time to look at it last week,

but this is exactly what we see happening

the very first time Satan tempted the human race.

Do you remember Satan’s words to Eve in the Garden of Eden?

Listen to this!

Gen. 3:1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, "Indeed, has God said, 'You shall not eat from any tree of the garden'?"

Appearing in the form of a serpent,

do you see what Satan is doing there?

He asks Eve a question designed to convince her

that God’s one commandment

was designed to wall her off

from something she had to have

in order to meet her needs.

“Did this God of yours

actually tell you that,

even though you need food,

and the only source of that food

is all of these trees around you,

did He tell you that you cannot eat from any of them?

Did He create you with this huge need,

and then wall you off

from the only thing that can meet that need?”

Eve knew that wasn’t what God had said,

but she still bought the lie.

Gen. 3:2 And the woman said to the serpent, "From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat;

Gen. 3:3 but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, 'You shall not eat from it or touch it, lest you die.'"

We know she bought the lie,

because she too misquoted God back to Satan,

making God’s commandment seem arbitrary and unreasonable.

'You shall not eat from it or touch it, lest you die.'

God never said anything about touching the fruit.

Then Satan comes back

with the same deception

in a form he knows Eve will now grab hold of.

Gen. 3:4 And the serpent said to the woman, "You surely shall not die!

Gen. 3:5 "For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

Do you see it?

“Eve, God is out to cheat you.

His commandment was designed by Him to deprive you

of the very thing you need the most.

You could be like God Himself,

knowing good and evil,

if only you ate that fruit.”

The LIE - God’s commandment is really given by Him

to keep us from the very things we need

in order to meet our deepest need.

And the whole trap is carefully designed

to put us in the position where

we feel we must choose:

And then we ended last week

by realizing that once we accept the lie,

either way we choose,

we loose.

If we choose to follow after what we think we must have in order to meet our needs,

the result will be bondage,

damaged relationships,

a sense of guilt and shame,

fear of discovery,

and continued unmet needs.

But if we choose obedience to what God says,

believing we do so at the cost of meeting our needs,

it will create an underlying resentment and distrust of God,

a distrust and resentment

that will drive us away from the very One whose leadership

and guidance we need most of all.

That’s as far as we got last week.

Now, before we finish this morning

I want to share with you

three essential elements

that can help disarm the power of this lie in the life of the Christian.

But there is one additional concern

I need to address first.

You see, flawed need-meeting techniques

are not the only problems we bring with us

into our relationship with our Lord.

We also bring with us

a distorted concept of what our true needs really are.

I’ve already mentioned that

when we come to Christ

our union with Him establishes for us

an eternal love union

with the One who knows perfectly both what are needs are,

and how those needs can be met.

Now, at first glance that sounds like heaven on earth.

And in many respects it really is.

But in order for us to see this whole thing accurately,

we also need to keep in mind

that when we come to Christ

we are severely damaged goods

entering into a life-long process of major reconstruction.

Do you remember Paul’s comment

in Romans 8:28-29?

Verse 28, if we pull it out of context

and paste it onto a wall plaque

it sounds really good:

Rom. 8:28 And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.

But the next statement Paul makes

puts that concept into its proper context:

Rom. 8:29 For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the first-born among many brethren;

It is absolutely true

that God does indeed

actively cause all things

to work together for good in our lives.

But the GOOD He is talking about

is the GOOD of being reshaped into the image of Christ Himself.

In other words,

when God goes about the process

of meeting our needs through Christ,

He does it within the context of knowing

exactly what we truly need

in order for us to be the people He designed us to be,

and in order for us to fulfill the roles He created us to fulfill.

The alcoholic comes to Christ

and hears Paul saying,

And my God shall supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.

And there are times when the alcoholic will respond by saying,

“Great! What I need right now is a drink!”

But the truth is,

what that person needs most of all

is the presence,

and strength,

and love of their God with them

as they go through the painful process

of breaking free from their addiction.

The workaholic comes to Christ

and hears Paul saying,

And my God shall supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.

And that person responds by saying,

“Great! What I need most of all right now

is for my marriage partner to get off my back

so that I can pour myself into my work the way I need to.”

But what that person really needs

is a major, often devastating restructuring of their entire life values

so that they can learn how to begin to draw

deep satisfaction from their love relationships,

rather than hiding behind a wall of work.

And they need to walk with their Lord

down the sometimes very long path of discovering

that what they do does not and cannot define who they are.

The young athlete comes to the Lord

and hears Paul saying to him or her:

And my God shall supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.

And they look at the upcoming game

and say to themselves,

“This is great! What I need more than anything else right now

is to win this thing!”

But the truth is,

what they need more than anything else

is the peace and security that can only come from knowing

that their value and their true identity does not come from their athletic performance

or how many games they win.

Their true identity comes from the creative work of God Himself,

in His special, unique design of them as His child.

In other words,

when our God pledges Himself to meeting our needs,

He does so on the basis of His perfect knowledge of us,

committing Himself to providing for us

not simply what may feel good for the moment,

but what truly is good for us

for both now and for the long haul.

Most of whatever I have learned about my God

I have learned through either personal failure,

or through turmoil,

or through pain.

With most of that failure,

and turmoil,

and pain,

in the process I have pointed out to my God

that what I needed most of all at that particular moment

was His immediate deliverance

from the failure,

or the turmoil,

or the pain.

But because He loves me perfectly,

and because He knows my needs perfectly,

when He knows it will work together for good in my life,

He has loved me enough to let me fail,

and to let me continue to churn,

and to let the pain remain a while longer.

And then, just briefly,

let me share the three elements that I have found helpful

in disarming Satan’s lie in my life.

#1. It is essential that we always begin by making sure that we have an accurate concept of God’s moral framework.

One of Satan’s favorite tricks

is to clutter up our perceptions

of what God has and has not said

introducing a whole bunch of cultural distortions in the process,

so that God appears to be completely irrational and arbitrary in His moral boundaries.

We are not going to take the time now

to go into this in depth,

but I will say that it is essential here

that we listen carefully and closely

to exactly what God has revealed to us in His Word,

making certain we do not allow the endless voices of religion around us

to amplify or expand those core moral life boundaries.

And let me give you one other tool here

that will help you when you find yourself getting confused

with the differences between Old and New Testament commandments.

There are a number of commandments given to the Israelites by God in the Old Testament.

Some of them are clearly tied to the core universal moral commandments

given to all people.

Many others were given by God

exclusively to the Jews

so that He could isolate and protect and preserve them as a unique nation,

a nation that would be preserved literally throughout history

as part of His plan both for bringing Christ into the world,

and in the future for proclaiming Christ in the final days.

If you find yourself getting confused with what applies to us now from the Old Testament

and what does not

here’s a simple yet highly effective rule.

If it applies to us now

you’ll find it clearly reaffirmed

in the writings of Paul, Peter, James, and John in the New Testament Epistles.

If it’s not restated and reaffirmed in the Epistles

it was closed-circuit communication between God and Israel.

And in the same way,

if you find any authoritative religious voice around you

writing for you a commandment

that is not clearly stated in the Epistles

walk away from it,

or ask your Lord to show you whether it is of value to you personally,

knowing it is certainly not universal in nature.

#2. When you find yourself in turmoil,

struggling with what appears to be a choice between

meeting some need and obeying the voice of your Lord,

affirm what you know to be the truth:

the only way your needs can ever be fully met is within God’s moral framework.

The battle we fight at this point in our thinking

is not so much a battle for unwavering allegiance to biblical morality,

but rather it is a battle for faith in the integrity of God Himself.

What kind of God do we have?

Is He distant,

impersonal,

arbitrary,

indifferent to our needs?

Or is He the God about whom Paul said:

Rom. 8:32 He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?

The battle between us and our Creator

truly is over for those of us who are in Christ.

Rom. 5:1 Therefore having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ...

He and I are now on the same side,

fighting for the same life,

and He cannot and will not ever cheat me,

or desert me,

or allow me to go through an instant of pain that is not essential for my greater good.

If what I see Him bringing into my life

does not appear to me to be what I feel I truly need,

one thing I know for sure -

my perception of my true needs is flawed.

#3. And then, finally, when we find ourselves feeling

that God is asking us to obey Him

at the expense of meeting some need,

try to recognize what need Satan is using to create that tension with us,

and then actively bring that need to God.

Is it a need for love?

Or for security?

Or for affirmation from others?

Whatever it is,

face the need honestly,

and bring it actively to God,

affirming a renewed faith in His ability to meet that need

in the right way,

at the right time.

When our Lord pledges Himself

to bringing freedom from sin into our lives,

a major part of that freeing process

involves His breaking the power of those lies Satan uses

to keep us in bondage to that sin.