Christian Ethics in a World of Confusion-Session 3 (Part 2)

We did not really get a chance to flush out all of the session from last week. So I want to back up a bit tonight to go back and finish the last part of what we talked about with third and final temptation that Christ faced. And then wrap up by reading a bit from an article.

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How does this third temptation relate to us?

If you have Jesus directly ruling over all of the kingdoms of the world, you have no Roman slave trade. You have no killing of innocent civilian populations. You have no deaths by malaria. You have no pornography. You have no abortion. You have no human trafficking. You have no unjust lending practices and the grinding of the faces of the poor into the ground. The devil is willing to make that deal as long as you have no cross.

This would have been so much easier, wouldn’t it? Yet it’s the same with us today. We know that the best thing to do is to be ethical in how we work, but if we’re willing to look the other way on one or two things, we can get the promotion. We know the book’s got a lot of bad theology, but we can make a lot of money selling it. No doubt you can think of any number of examples. The heart of this temptation is seeing ourselves magnified now rather than glorified when Christ returns. This is perhaps the one that I’m most watchful for in my own life. I’ve had things happen that make me start feeling really good about myself, and I’m a bit uncomfortable because of it; because I know how prideful I can be (especially when I’m trying to be humble), I must be vigilant. “The self-exalting ego cannot enter the reign of God, no matter how powerful it seems right now, no matter how normal it seems in the present. Narcissism is satanism. Self-exaltation is devil worship. Satan’s power will only stand for a flash of time, and that time is growing shorter.

So what do we do? We must understand that there is no temptation that the Bible doesn’t address; indeed, every temptation we face is a “personality-specific variation of those universally common entry points for sin, the places where our Lord Jesus was tempted in the desert” (p. 177). This application allows us a great deal of room to develop equally personality-specific solutions. Essentially, we must take our desires seriously—as seriously as Scripture does. “Just don’t do it” might work for a while, but eventually it’s going to let you down. Therefore, we need to seek wisdom, maturity and self-control in order to discipline our desires, to conform them to Christ’s. But even in that, we have to remember: The struggle is never going to end, at least not while we still draw breath. Every day, we will face temptation, until the day Jesus returns. But as we cling to Christ, as we wait for the day that He finally comes again to crush the serpents head once and for all, we find the strength to persevere.

Morality, without the gospel is a deal the devil is willing to make every single time and to have this sense of I can exalt myself in some way, the temptation, the vulnerability there is one that constantly, again, questions who are you? Are you really a child of God? Who are you? Are you really an heir of the promises that God has given to you? Jesus is able to say, "I will not receive all the kingdoms of the world," not because the kingdoms of the world are not a good thing to have. He ultimately will have them but how does he get them? Through the way of the cross. You ultimately have glory but how do you get glory? Through the way of the cross, self-bearing of a cross suffering with him for a little while that we may be glorified with him, counting others as more important than ourselves. That is what Jesus walks through here.

Now, what you're going to face is that you're going to be facing all of the time, all of these various aspects of temptation. You're going to have a conscience that is to greater or lesser degrees aware of what's going on around you. What's important for you to do and what's important for you to know? It's important for you to constantly be aware, first of all, of your identity. Who are you? What does it mean for you to be loved by God? What does it mean for you to really have your sins forgiven? What does it mean for you to have the sort of access that the book of Hebrews talks about here where you're able to boldly come before the throne of grace.

What are some of the signs we maybe loosing sight of our identity when we are in the midst of temptation?

One of the easiest ways that you can find whether or not you have lost a sense of your identity is in terms of your prayer life. If you find yourself, where it is very difficult to pray, and if you find yourself going for long periods of time without praying, wonder what is going on. It could be that what's happening in your life is that you have this sort of pride in the flesh that doesn't really think that you need to pray.

Nobody, when the car is spinning out of control and everything's in slow motion, stops and says, "You know, I probably ought to pray and keep up with my spiritual disciplines." When the car is spinning out of control, you're screaming out, "God, help me!!" Or it might be the exact reverse. It might be what's happening with the man and the woman in Genesis three of a hiding in the garden for the voice of God because you're ashamed and you think that somehow God would not receive you, if he were to see you. When in reality, what the Gospel says to you is that there is nothing happening in your life right now and there is nothing that has happened in your life in the past that Jesus is shocked by.

In contrast, there are certain places that someone else may well be able to go that someone else would say, "I could not handle that because of my particular aspect of vulnerability." Then to constantly be reminding yourself of where it is that you're actually going. What it is that you're really longing for? If what you're grappling with is the sense of hyper ambition and status and power to recognize, why do I want that? It's because God has given me a longing to share in glory and I'm being directed towards something that is far less than that, that is going to ultimately leave me disappointed and that is ultimately going to come crashing down. We need to think about what the promises God has made to us actually are about.

Think about the warnings. Don't become the sort of person that is driven purely by your own ambitions, hearing that sense of alarm that then slowly fades. Where you find yourself saying things that you wouldn't have said before. Hearing yourself or recognizing that you're thinking things that you wouldn't have thought before. Where is it that I'm actually going? I'm going to a kingdom that has been bought by the blood of Christ at the cross. That means I am a cross-shaped person who's willing to endure suffering and humiliation because I have been crucified with Christ and recognize that when you're going through all of these things, the sense of pain and alarm and sometimes even exhaustion that comes along with battling whatever your particular vulnerabilities are, is not a sign that God has left you.

Don't worry when you're fighting. Worry when you have stopped fighting. When the fight is taking place, remind yourself this is the presence of the Spirit and the Spirit is pointing me in a particular direction, not because God is trying to withhold something from me, but because God is trying to take me somewhere in the kingdom of God.

Adapted from: https://erlc.com/resource-library/capitol-conversations-episodes/christian-ethics-with-russell-moore-part-two/

Russell Moore. Who is the resource for where a large portion of this material on ethics is sourced. Wrote an article in February of this year about the scandal surrounding Ravi Zacharias. As someone who is an apologist. I have traveled many of the same roads and read much of Ravi’s work. But the scandalous news following his death was devastating and enraging to me. Russel Moore shares much of the same feeling when he writes....

I am probably too angry to be writing about the Ravi Zacharias scandal. The report from the outside investigator, as reported by Christianity Today, regarding the abuse of multiple women by the apologist, demonstrates that the pattern here was worse than what even those expecting the very worst could have imagined. This report pictures not a mere “moral failure,” but a pattern of predation that can only be described as criminal, sociopathic, and, indeed, satanic.

He goes on to describe the report in graphic detail and about how Ravi justified his behavior.

Back to Moore. He continues:

Is it any wonder that evangelicalism faces a credibility crisis among our own young? To see where all this leads, simply look at Pew and other surveys about religious disaffiliation...... The church is bleeding out the next generation, not because “the culture” is so opposed to the church’s fidelity to the truth, but just the reverse. The culture often does not reject us because they don’t believe the church’s doctrinal and moral teachings, but because they have evidence that the church doesn’t believe its own doctrinal and moral teachings. They suspect that Jesus is just a means to an end—to some political agenda, to a market for selling merchandise, or for the predatory appetites of some maniacal narcissist.

The witness of the church is at stake. More importantly, the lives of those made in the image of God, those for whom Jesus died, are at stake. This awful report—coming on the heels of so many other situations detailed before—should rouse the conscience to ask not just how sadists can get into places of Christian leadership, but whether we have created a situation where the very presence of a conscience is an impediment to advancement in the Machiavellian and sometimes Caligula-like world of some sectors of American Christianity.

https://www.russellmoore.com/2021/02/15/enraged-by-ravi-part-1-the-wreckage-of-ravi-zacharias/

Now, when we hear things like this, we can respond in one or both of two ways. We can be angry. And rightly so! Or we can fall into despair. We can then also look at the incredibly high bar set by Christ and seeing Him as God say, “Who then can be saved?”

Dr. Moore goes on to conclude his 2 part article with words of hope. He finished by writing this:

Your salvation and discipleship are not dependent on whether the preacher from whom you heard the gospel is genuine, but rather on whether the gospel itself is genuine. It is.

Predators often move forward by hiding behind mimicked truth. Predatory filmmakers proceed by learning how to make good films. Predatory politicians go forward by honing political skills. Fraudulent religious leaders often peddle false doctrine, but some of them also traffic in true doctrines by which they have not personally been transformed. Yes, wolves often come with false doctrine. But that does not mean that wolves are limited to the flocks that tolerate false doctrine. In infiltrating a sheep pen, a wolf will come in the skin of a sheep, not that of a goat.

Judas Iscariot, after all, preached the gospel of the kingdom for some time. Imagine if you had heard the gospel from him, embraced it, and then discovered his end result. You would probably be shaken. What you responded to, though, was not Judas Iscariot, but the words he echoed from somewhere else. Test the message you received, even if you’ve learned to reject the messenger who carried it to you. As the Apostle taught us, “test everything; hold fast to what is good” (1 Thess. 5:21).

After learning about someone fraudulent, you may then wonder whether you can ever trust anyone again. “Who else might be lying to me?” you might ask. It is good to be skeptical, again testing every message and messenger. But do not grow cynical, protecting yourself from future love or trust. Even in the darkest situations, we can always see the goodness of God, often in those who are rescuing the hurting.

https://www.russellmoore.com/2021/02/16/enraged-by-ravi-part-2-what-if-you-were-converted-or-discipled-under-a-ministry-like-ravis/