First world problems
Misquoted • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
0 ratings
· 1 viewNotes
Transcript
Misquoted
Last of the series. We have looked at verses in the bible that many of us, me included, have wrongly applied in out lives.
We will look at a couple more today, but the purpose of this series has been to equip you.
Do you believe something because you read it in scripture and studied it or because someone told you.
Truth effect
If a lie is told enough times and sounds good, it will become fact.
“If a lie is only printed often enough, it becomes a quasi-truth, and if such a truth is repeated often enough, it becomes an article of belief, a dogma, and men will die for it.”
“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. ” Carl Sagen
FAKE NEWS
The original FAKE NEWS was the serpent in the garden.
21 But examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good;
1 Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.
Definition
Usage
Context
Historical Background
Logic
Precedent
Unity
Inference
Two Verses
11 ‘For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope.
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.
These verses have been pulled out of context and slapped on coffee mugs and bumper stickers and prevented to mean that: God loves me and won’t let bad things happen to me!
The problem is that this produces shallow, fragile Christians that fall apart the first time they experience real pain.
SO, We are going to take what we have learned and look at these two verses to see if we can understand what they really mean.
11 ‘For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope.
“That’s my Jam!”
Grandma’s needlepoint
You live in a landlocked state and have a Salt Life sticker on the Hybrid.
CONTEXT
This WAS a promise by God.
Letter written by Jeremiah the prophet to the exiled elders taken into exile from Jerusalem into Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar.
10 “For thus says the Lord, ‘When seventy years have been completed for Babylon, I will visit you and fulfill My good word to you, to bring you back to this place.
It’s a promise from God, but he wasn’t talking to you!
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.
Promise to believers. Again The problem is that if you believe that this means that God is going to keep bad stuff from happening to you, what happens to your faith when bad stuff happens?
Maybe I’m not loving God enough, or the right way.
Maybe I’m not really called according to His purpose.
Maybe God isn’t real.
We will look at context in a minute.
LOGIC
This is a promise to all believers in Christ.
It can’t have special meaning to you alone.
It has to mean the same thing to all believers.
IF it means that God will give us the good things of this world now. (Motorcycles, nice house, good food, health, an absence of trouble)
How do you explain Stephen?
The Christians aboard the Titanic?
Christians with terminal cancer?
So If it doesn’t mean what we thought it meant, what does it mean.
Definition: Easy translation.
God causes- God causes
all things - all things
Good - good, moral, noble, gentle.
Called- invited.
Context
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.
AND There is something before it.
24 For in hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope; for who hopes for what he already sees?
25 But if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it.
HOPE in Christ and salvation.
26 In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words;
27 and He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.
God the Spirit intercedes for us to God the Son. God the Son knows God the Spirit and so causes things to work according to the will of God the Father.
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.
That doesn’t help….…still believe nothing bad is going to happen. Bubble Boy Christians.
29 For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren;
30 and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified.
31 What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us?
Did you see it?
What is Good?
To be conformed to the image of His Son.
Sacrificial Love!
Servant Leadership!
HOLY.
FOR Believers: EVERYTHING that happens has the purpose of molding you to the image of Christ.
I don’t like that?
Tough
8 But now, O Lord, You are our Father,
We are the clay, and You our potter;
And all of us are the work of Your hand.
20 On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, “Why did you make me like this,” will it?
“It is doubtful whether God can bless a man greatly until He has hurt him deeply.”
“It is doubtful whether God can bless a man greatly until He has hurt him deeply.”
― A.W. Tozer
35 Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
Trust the process. Trust God.