June 3, 2024 WWJWMTD by Steve, the son of John (2SoJ)
Building Under Stress/A Foolish Builder
By Timothy Keller and Otis Davis
Building with inferior materials, which will not last, especially when under stress. There are many examples. Recently a significant increase in contaminated food and drug recalls. Counterfeit Chinese bolts are made to look exactly like the high-stress quality bolts at a cheap price that were installed in important transmission towers which failed causing them to fall. Recently a Boeing airliner exit door ripped off in flight due to missing door bolts not installed during manufacture. There is a video program that documents many failed construction structures. What happened? Quality inspections are an important job but were not properly completed. Critical construction and inspections were casual without scrutiny. The business becomes lacks and over-confident; efficiency and profit are prioritized over quality and safety. Inspectors may have been marginalized losing their power to enforce quality regulations. Company culture that was once a well-oiled machine producing a high-quality product, deteriorates to just a corrupted rusted shell of what it was. Organizations, businesses, society, and culture are given life by living individual people, who become drunk from success, developing an attitude and culture of pride and overconfidence. Resting on past success is dangerous and can set us up for future failure. Pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall (Proverbs 16:18 NKJV). Success must be endured with humility, which seems counterintuitive. Better to be of a humble spirit with the lowly, than to divide the spoil with the proud. Prov 16:18 NKJV. Humans individually are also in need of regular inspections for success and stress damage.
And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it." Matthew 7:26-27 ESV Build on the Rock of Jesus not the sand of this world. We live in a place and that place is in a nation, like the United States of America or one of the other 200 nations. We were born in one of the nations of the earth, which we did not choose. We are not just building a house to live in we are building a life. And that life is in this world, on the earth. And in this world, there are kingdoms or nations in which we live, pay dues or taxes, laws to be obeyed, and leaders who make the laws. There is another greater better kingdom in which we can live and enjoy. The kingdom of the only true and living God; whose king is king of kings, lord of lords. This kingdom we also can be born again into, by our choosing. Or we can continue living and building in the man-made nation of our original birth. This greater kingdom overlays supersedes all other kingdoms because it is at a higher level.
This God-created world can teach us greater deeper truths of how to build in this world. Job 12:7-8 ESV "But ask the beasts, and they will teach you; the birds of the heavens, and they will tell you; or the bushes of the earth, and they will teach you; and the fish of the sea will declare to you. The Cactus Wren builds its nest, its home, in the Cholla cactus, one of the dangerous cacti, growing 2 inches sharp as glass spines. This cactus provides protection against the bird’s family predators. Like a horse in open country, they did not stumble; like cattle that go down to the plain, they were given rest by the Spirit of the Lord. Isa 63:13-14 TNIV. (Davis, Otis V.)
Solomon sends us to the ant; Agur to the rock badger, the locust, the spider; Isaiah to the ox and the ass; Jeremiah to the stork, the turtledove, the crane, the swallow. Job’s argument is that the same lack of interference on God’s part in the free operations of men in this life; in punishing the wicked and rewarding the good, you see around you in all the lower stages of life. Look to the beasts of the field. Does the Governor of the world interfere to crush the lion, the tiger, the panther, or the wolf from devouring the feebler creation of His hands? Does He come to the rescue of the shrieking, suffering victims? Behold the "fowls of the air." See the eagle, the vulture, the hawk pouncing down on the dove, the thrush, the blackbird, or the robin. Does He interfere to arrest their flight, or curb their savage instincts? "Speak to the earth." See the noxious weeds choking the flowers, stealing away life from the fruit trees, does He send a blast to wither the pernicious herb? Not He. Turn to the "fishes of the sea." Does He prevent the whale, the shark, and other monsters from devouring the smaller tenants of the deep? No; He allows all these creatures to develop their instincts and their propensities. It is even so with man. He allows man full scope here to work out what is in him, to get what he can. (from The Biblical Illustrator) Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. Phil 2:12-13 ESV
Building on the sand of this world. Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed, which is idolatry. Col 3:5 NIV Obviously, neither Paul nor Jesus was talking about literal surgery. Sin does not come from the eye, hand, or foot; it comes from the heart, the evil desires within. After he had named these sensual sins, Paul added, "and greed, which is idolatry" (Col 3:5 b). Greed is the sin of always wanting more, whether it be more things or more pleasures. The greedy person is never satisfied with what he has, and he is usually envious of what other people have. This is idolatry, for greed puts things in the place of God. Money can become a spiritual addiction, and like all addictions, it hides its true proportions from its victims. We take more and greater risks to get ever-diminishing satisfaction from the thing we crave until a breakdown occurs. When we begin to recover, we ask, “What were we thinking? How could we have been so blind?” We wake up like people with a hangover who can hardly remember the night before. But why? Why did we act so irrationally? Why did we completely lose sight of what is right? The Bible’s answer is that the human heart is an “idol factory.” These men have taken their idols into their hearts Ezek 14:3 ESV Like us, the elders must have responded to this charge, “Idols? What idols? I do not see any idols.” God was saying that the human heart takes good things like a successful career, love, material possessions, and even family, and turns them into ultimate things. Our hearts deify them as the center of our lives, because, we think, they can give us significance and security, safety, and fulfillment, if we attain them. We think that idols are bad things, but that is almost never the case. The greater the good, the more likely we are to expect that it can satisfy our deepest needs and hopes. Anything can serve as a counterfeit god, especially the very best things in life. What is an idol? It is anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, anything you seek to give you what only God can give. Because we have died with Christ (Col 3:3), we have the spiritual power to slay the earthly, fleshly desires that want to control us. Our Lord used the same idea when He said, If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. Matt 5:29 NIV
We live in a secular world, with idols, the glittering gods of our age, holding title to the functional trust of our hearts. Many of those idols that we have worshipped for years have come crashing down around us. This is a great opportunity, to briefly experience “disenchantment.” Such times come to us as individuals, when some great enterprise, pursuit, or person on which we have built our hope fails to deliver what we thought was promised. It very rarely comes to an entire society. The way forward, out of despair, is to discern the idols of our hearts and our culture. But that will not be enough. The only way to free ourselves from the destructive influence of counterfeit gods is to turn back to the true one. The living God, who revealed himself both at Mount Sinai and on the Cross, is the only true Lord who, if you find him, can truly fulfill you, and, if you fail him, can truly forgive you. “Setting the mind and heart on things above” where “your life is hid with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:1-3) means appreciating, rejoicing, and resting in what Jesus has done for you. It entails joyful worship, a sense of God’s reality in prayer. Jesus must become more beautiful to your imagination, more attractive to your heart, than your idol. That is what will replace your counterfeit gods. If you uproot the idol and fail to “plant” the love of Christ in its place, the idol will grow back. Rejoicing and repentance must go together. Repentance without rejoicing will lead to despair. Rejoicing without repentance is shallow and will only provide passing inspiration instead of deep change. Indeed, it is when we rejoice over Jesus’s sacrificial love for us most fully that, paradoxically, we are most truly convicted of our sin. When we repent out of fear of consequences, we are not sorry for the sin, but for ourselves. Fear-based repentance (“I’d better change, or God will get me”) is really self-pity. In fear-based repentance, we do not learn to hate the sin for itself, and it does not lose its attractive power. when we rejoice over God’s sacrificial, suffering love for us—seeing what it cost him to save us from sin—we learn to hate the sin for what it is. We see what sin costs God. What most assures us of God’s unconditional love (Jesus’s costly death) is what most convicts us of the evil of sin. Fear-based repentance makes us hate ourselves. Joy-based repentance makes us hate sin. Rejoicing in Christ is also crucial because idols are almost always good things. If we have made idols out of work and family, we do not want to stop loving our work and our family. Rather, we want to love Christ so much more that we are not enslaved by our attachments. Truth shall set us free from the counterfeit gods that control us.
By Keller, Timothy. Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters.
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Dr. Steven J. Wentland www.wwjwmtd.com
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