New Thoughts (1/23/03-1/24/03)
Deceivers: playing on our sympathies and feelings to delude us, to pull us away from the truth. They are adept at slipping past our mental defenses, for their words will sound plausible enough, they will resemble the truth and yet not be the truth. For them, to play on our emotions provides the cover, distracts the mind sufficiently to allow their words to penetrate and take hold. How we must be on guard! How we must remain diligent when we listen to those around us!
No, and it's not just when we're out in the world of the lost that this diligence is so needful! The church is not in itself any protection. Deceivers come wrapped in the trappings of Christ's own; disguised as His very apostles, they come spreading their lies. Too often, the setting and the apparent credentials are enough for us. The words must be true. What need is there to check it out? Oh, how great is that need! Every pastor worth his salt (and I thank God our own pastor is such an one) will tell you this, will tell you to check themselves out, let alone any visiting speaker. Do we listen to our leadership?
Look, if we don't know about anybody else, we should at least have some idea about ourselves, albeit an imperfect viewpoint. We are capable of error. We are capable of egregious and most dangerous error. Our leaders, be they ever so godly, remain just as capable of error and they know it. Why do you suppose Scripture accents the need for gathering together in fellowship? It's not just to feed some emotional hunger of ours, it's to provide a corrective agent for our understanding when our understanding is off base.
See also, in this warning, the need to have our thoughts, imaginations, and emotions under submission to the truth. How is this to be, except that with our intellect, with our brains, we know and understand that truth? What defense do we have if we can't logically pick apart the arguments thrown our way, apply the truth of God's Word, and determine where the answer lies? Yes, we have the Spirit to inform us. Absolutely! But, we also have warning in this area: test the spirits, to see if they are of the Lord! Here, too, we cannot take things at face value. God is not the only one who can whisper in our ears! His sheep will listen to no other voice. This doesn't mean they don't hear them, it means that they have trained themselves to know the difference, and to pay these other voices no heed.
Entirely too much of what gets laid out as the Spirit's leading is no more than our own deceptive emotions. The heart, we know, is exceedingly wicked and deceptive. If we'll believe anybody's lies, we'll believe our own; and if we believe our own, it won't be long before we believe anybody's. The heart is the seat of emotions. While the heart remains deceived, emotions remain untrustworthy. They need the protection of thoughtful, well-trained minds. Look at what Paul says of these deceivers: They capture the thoughts of those caught up in their sins and led by their emotions (2Ti 3:6). Emotions are not to lead us. They are a wonderful blessing from God, but they are to be submitted to Him, and to the controlling of our reasoned thoughts. If we allow our emotions to rise above their station, they will become a snare for our thoughts, will take them captive, and allow the disease of false belief to take hold.
Last night, one of our brothers at church was speaking about the delusional thinking that accompanies our sinful lives. This is the effect of emotional thought-poisoning. Emotions have built up and not been dealt with, and they have poisoned our ability to think rationally. We think only in pseudo-rational terms, building up fanciful, seemingly logical arguments on the shaky foundations of our feelings. But our feelings are built up with a total absence of real information. They may be based on nothing at all, or they may be based on a solid diet of lies. The foundation can't be trusted, and yet we've built up these huge edifices on that foundation. God must come and pull the foundation out from under us. This shanty must be torn down so that a real foundation can be established, and the temple of the Holy Spirit built upon it.
However, we must stand warned, also, against the idea that bare intelligence will suffice. Paul warns us about this problem as well. Some men, he tells us, have made a hobby of empty debates (1Ti 1:6). They love to argue, and apply all the intricate rules of logic, but they have turned from the truth, and so are again operating from a place of no foundation. Logic is only useful when it begins from a real premise, from a root of Truth. They have pulled up the root, and so, all their fine logical argument becomes no more than a tangle of dead weeds.
Where this disease continues, the problem worsens. Later in that same letter, Paul tells of the effects. They understand nothing. Their interest is no longer in arriving at the truth, but rather they focus only on creating controversy and arguments (1Ti 6:4-5). This is of no use to anybody, and only brings about suspicion, envy, and the like. Where they are allowed free rein, they will attract others of like spirit, devoid of truth and anxious to argue their nonsense. Sadly, they will see the church as a place to practice their depraved hobby. They will see the pulpit as a place to promote their nonsense, and maybe make a living at it. Godliness, to such an one, is but a tool used to turn a profit; no more meaningful than a spade is to a farmer.
They are teachers, but in a darker sense. In their deceived state, they yet speak with eloquence. They speak in a calculated attempt to influence the understanding of those who hear. They seek to make their opinion the opinion of those they teach. This is part and parcel of what it is to be a teacher. But they seek to circumvent the mind by appeals to the emotions. We are called to teach. As teachers, we should certainly have it as our purpose to be influencing the understanding of our students. What else is the point of teaching? If this is not our purpose, then we have joined those who merely put forth arguments for the sake of arguing. But, we are to teach with appeals to reason. We are called to lay out the clear case for Truth, to build in our students a foundation of Truth, to give our students the weapons with which they will be able to resist the deluded arguments of such deceivers.
There's another wonderful aspect of the teaching we are called to teach. It comes to us with the added power of the Teacher from whom we learned it! And better still, He remains with us as we teach, so that even as our own ability to teach adds to the lesson taught, so the wonderful ability of our Teacher also works through us, adding His ability on top of, around, and through our own, filling the message of Truth with the power to convict and convince!
And this is exactly what we're called to do, as we saw in the last section: convict and convince, but underneath that effort must be the love which God has poured out in our hearts. Our efforts must not be allowed to become an angry attack. That is never God's purpose in the Gospel. True, to the sinner, the unveiling of his sin is going to be a painful thing, but its not to be done vindictively. It's to be done with the same motivation that the medical professional is called to have: the motivation of bringing about healing. The wrath of God is reserved for the sin, and for him who brought sin into His creation. As His emissaries, our wrath must likewise be reserved. Toward the sinner, as He has shown in His dealings with us, there is love, and the hope of redemption. We would never have sought that redemption if He had not exposed our sins to us. Who will seek to be saved if they don't see any danger? We are no different than those whom we are called to help.
Even the most deceptive of teachers is, at the root, but a deceived man himself. Yes, they must be stopped, silenced, kept from spreading their hurtful delusions. But our hope should ever be their reclamation for the kingdom of God. Shouting them down with denouncements is not the answer. Marking them as evil men to be avoided may become necessary, but it's not the first thing that should come to our minds. Paul tells us that there is a time when this becomes necessary, but there are other ways that should be pursued first. Our primary efforts should be given to a patient, well-reasoned response to their errors, in the hopes that they will hear the truth and comprehend it. In this, we may save a soul from damnation, and alongside us, angels will rejoice. Failing that, we may, again like Paul, have to turn them over for a time to the enemy that has so deluded them. Yet even this must be done with the hope that delusion will end, conviction will come, and redemption will be accepted.
To save such a one from his present state will require our time and our effort. It will require great patience and preparation. Much of what modern man believes has been built upon a long chain of development in thought. Unfortunately for man, that chain of thought, now centuries in the making, has been founded on false premises. As it has crept into the culture, it has so permeated all that we are taught, all that we experience, that in many cases, no cause has been given to doubt its truth. Where no alternative has ever been offered, what is is accepted as what should be, what must be. We have joined the ancient Greek in his acceptance of the Fates, yet we don't even have the benefit of his mythological beliefs. We have only a stark 'reality' with no real explanation. So, man becomes resigned to his lot, sees no hope of anything better, loses sight of what lies beyond this life, loses sufficient reason to reach for a greater good. All that's left is pragmatism. All that's left is to make his miserable lot as pleasant as he is able, and let others see to themselves. Welcome to the modern world. How kind and loving is it to leave a man in this condition? How can we not reveal the truth to such an one, expose the wounds of his sins to the light, and give them opportunity to heal under the loving care of our great Physician? How can we not come to such an one and say, "but I show you a more excellent way…?"
