Pastor John,
This morning I was reading the Thought for the Morning (January 2)*, and it was a letter from a brother who asked you why sometimes Jesus told the people he healed to go tell everyone what God had done for them, and why at other times he forbade them to spread the news of their healing. Your answer was simple (and I’m paraphrasing): At times, the Father would lead Jesus to say one thing, and at other times, He would lead him to say something else, depending on the circumstances.
After I finished reading, I started thinking how I, too, used to get confused (and I still do at times) whenever I find something in Jesus’ words or deeds that seems contradictory. And as I was pondering over this, suddenly a thought came to me “out of the blue”, and it was this:
“It’s because in our carnal minds, we’re always looking for a rule.”
And it dawned on me: When we read the Bible, what our carnal mind does is, it looks for a rule or a set of rules that God might want us to go by. And the reason why sometimes (or often times) we get confused by the ministry and the teachings of Jesus is because he never followed a rule (or rules) given to him by the Father. He was always led by the Spirit, and as Paul said, “A natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot comprehend them because they are spiritually discerned”.
It felt good because I felt like God had just revealed something to me, and it was not even over yet.
I wanted to do some Bible reading in the morning, and I started reading Galatians, but thoughts about the way our fleshly nature tries to please God just kept flooding in, and I felt that I needed to close the book so that I could pay attention to the Spirit. And this is some of what I got:
When we read the Bible but we’re not filled with and governed by the Spirit of God, what we’re really doing is looking for a belief system that our human minds can comprehend, and our natural man can live by. And that is exactly what Satan has offered to the fallen human race through the religion of Christianity: A belief system that sinful humans can follow (thinking that they’re pleasing God by doing so) without having to die to self.
In other words, Christianity is THE BEST THING the carnal mind was able to come up with. Baptism with water is the best baptism people can administer without God. Communion with bread and wine is the closest thing to real communion with Jesus that sinful man is able to produce. Living a life as righteous and pure as humanly possible is the closest thing to holy living people can achieve. And it’s all filthy rags in God’s sight! As David said, “Every man at his best state is altogether vanity.”
I feel like the Spirit has just summed up Christianity for me:
“Christianity is filthy rags institutionalized.”
I’ve heard you, Pastor John, many times before, talking about “rites and rules” (in relation to the kingdom of God) with such disdain, in so negative a context, that sometimes I felt like you were going over the top. I understood that rites and rules are not what following Jesus is about, but I also thought that they couldn’t possibly be as bad as you’re making it sound like. I feel like after today’s experience, I understand more than I ever have where you’re coming from.
Zoli
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Hi Zoli.
We see this in the Old Testament. God told Moses to strike a rock on Mount Sinai, but punished him severely for striking a rock later when God had told him only to speak to it. What such Old Testament stories tell us is that God has always been alive, doing all things “after the counsel of His own will.” And to be led by the Spirit means to know what God wants us to do RIGHT NOW, regardless of what He wanted yesterday, or even an hour ago.
May God grant us the grace to be led by the Spirit. Otherwise, we cannot even guess what we should do.
Thank you for that wonderful testimony.
Pastor John.