Recently I addressed my grandson for kicking his brother. I told him to go to his room. He started to cry. He felt unjustly treated because his brother had kicked him first. I asked him, did you do wrong? He replied, yes! Then I instructed him to take his punishment and not justify it because his brother had been mean. There and then he changed his attitude, so I said, ok, go out and play. This is just how God deals with us, but few see it.
Human nature automatically defends itself, explains it away why it wasn’t that bad, tries to find an exit so it’s not so embarrassed, and tries to analyse why it happened and who made them do it, when all that’s required is to admit … I was wrong.
The secret … accept the addressing of your pride and you will find salvation. Explain away why you did it and you will miss salvation because you will create a pattern of lying to explain it away.
Don’t just assume you’re saved because you think you’re nice or God is nice
You don’t know you’re saved until there’s a test of faith. It’s what you do when somebody hurts you or, justly or unjustly corrects you … that’s the intersection that exposes your faith and the intersection that verifies your salvation. Faith trusts that God works all for His good, but pride has a mood, bites back and defends itself.
Excuse it away = pride. Sincerely own it without excuses = repentance
You can’t repent with blame or excuses as to why you did it, or self-explanation, or trying to find the root of the temptation. That’s really pride trying to protect itself and admitting it’s wrong at the same time.
Human nature automatically protects itself with excuses as to why I did it so I don’t look bad and feel embarrassed in the eyes of the people. Repentance deliberately blocks this pathway and simply owns that I did do it even if somebody else stirred me to do it. Repentance challenges one’s feelings; pride supports and justifies one’s feelings. The consequence of pride is feeling sorry for yourself (pity party), figure out why I did it so I can explain it and justify it, find fault with the authority, and then deduce that the correction is over-the-top and unjust. Thus pride deduces that I’m free to believe in myself again as being right and not wrong.
The door
You don’t have to find God. God finds you when you come to the revelation that you’re arrogant and selfish … that’s the door. Salvation is at this intersection of self-exposure; this is where God’s knocking on your door; at this intersection. We find Jesus talking with Peter, not Judas. He’s not knocking on Judas’ door; he won’t take the rebuke.
You’ve got to give up the thing that you worship (money, family, success, friends, knowledge) before you’ll see that you’re full of yourself; before you’ll recognise the knocking on your door.
Salvation isn’t inviting Jesus into your heart, but exposing your heart to Him
Rev. 3:20 says … Behold I stand at the door and knock. That doesn’t equal inviting Jesus in for a chat and a meal, but opening the door of your sin-filled heart for His light to expose it and destroy the darkness.
Q. When do you open the door? When the Lord knocks, and Rev.3:19 confirms that the knock is at the point of correction.
Q. In Rev.3: 21 we’re called to overcome, but what are we to overcome? The answer is … the world, 1J.5:3.
Q. What’s the world? It’s not the people around you but the flesh in you that wants what the people around you have. That is … I want that and if I can’t have it I’ll have a mood.
Q. How do you overcome the world in you? The answer is … by faith 1J.5:4
Q. What’s faith? It’s no confidence in me because I know I’m full of myself. It’s confidence in God and His plan despite my arrogance. It’s only activated in the face of opposition and fear. It’s not having no fear or bad feelings; it’s walking through them by trusting His outcome.
Q. How did Jesus overcome? He did not surrender to His moods of self-defence that Satan tried to get Him to fall into via family attack, religious attack, and elevated ability and pride attack, but rather He chose patient endurance by placing His confidence in the Father in the face of mocking, ridicule, misjudgement and death.
Q. How is your salvation verified? The answer is … by faith in God in the face of hassles and injustices against you, rather than retaliating with blame. It’s taking the blame instead of blaming.
The truth is … Jesus died by blame attack. In the same way, true Christians die to themselves by blame attack … Matthew 5:10-12. Thus, people don’t want the true salvation because they don’t want the blame attack.
David vs King Saul
Human nature makes excuses for its behaviour so it doesn’t look bad. David didn’t. He knew he had sinned. He didn’t try and explain why he sinned. He didn’t look for ancestral demonic doors that he could explain his action with. He didn’t blame Bathsheba for exposing herself. He didn’t divert the responsibility onto someone who may have tempted him.. He didn’t blame years of stressful resistance against King Saul. He simply owned that he had done wrong and repented.
Signs of King Saul ….
1 Samuel 15 & 18
- “You like David more than me” envy
- Blame the people in the face of correction
- Excuse and explain why it is not your fault
- Have to look good in the eyes of the people
- Usurp the prophet’s role = TELL the spiritual authority what’s right and wrong
- Try to destroy your enemy
Most Christians worship Jesus under the banner of King Saul and have no idea that they are. They covet positions of value and when they’re corrected they feel devalued. Clearly, if you accept correction by excusing it away, you’re really saying to the authority … I’ll agree with you because I have to but I think you’re wrong. In other words you’re just secretly stubborn like King Saul. King Saul lost his salvation, not because of his sin, but by his stubbornness to agree with the correction.
Signs of David
- Sin
- No excuses for his sin
- Cop the unjust blame from King Saul
- He didn’t mock when his enemy fell
David responded to correction the opposite to King Saul.
Why did God say that David did what was right in His eyes? 1 Kings 14:8
How come God said David did what was right in His eyes when David had murdered and committed adultery? Because God didn’t measure him by his deeds; He measured him by his heart as displayed by his attitude to correction. It wasn’t because he was exempt from sin. It was because he saw his arrogance and repented.
Bad mathematics
Bad mathematics is when the equations we live by are our own manufactured pride formulas of selfishness which are designed to put the other party in their place and protect our own position.
Modern Pentecostalism teaches that sickness is the sign of sin. The purpose of this equation is to shift the blame … if you’re sick then you are the sinner, not me. I’m not sick so I’m right and you’re wrong.
Modernism says that if I say sorry then you are responsible to forgive and forget. The purpose of this equation is to shift the blame … if you talk to me then everything’s ok and if you don’t talk to me then you are the one in sin, not me, because I’ve moved on but you are still holding resentment.
Modernism believes that if you are nasty to me then I have the right to be nasty back. The purpose of this equation is to shift the blame.
Modernism believes that you get bad happen to you because you did something bad. The purpose of this equation is to shift the blame onto someone that made you do bad so you aren’t responsible for the bad so you can get out of the punishment.
Modernism believes that I’m good so if you make me feel bad you’re the sinner. The purpose of this equation is to shift the blame.
These are all pride deductions; it’s telling and not able to be told, it’s intimidation, it’s not love. The purpose of all these equations is to shift the blame. None of it is God’s truth.
Biblical evidence contradicts this bad mathematics. In John 9 the man born blind was not sick because of his sin. He was deliberately created blind by God for the glory of God and for the man’s salvation. His blindness saved him. His parents were confronted by the religious system and right at that intersection they chose excuses and consequently didn’t hear the knock on the door and lost their chance of salvation.
The story of Job also contradicts this lie. In Job 11, Zophar derided Job for his sin because he believed that sickness = the sign of sin. The truth was that God Himself permitted Job’s hassles. The truth is that God derided Eliphaz and Zophar and honoured Job.
Biblical evidence declares there is none good, except God. So if you think you are good, then you ignorantly and arrogantly think you are God.
Biblical evidence is clear in the way David responded to His father-in-law. He held no grievance, but he certainly didn’t forget nor reconcile; it would have got him killed. Neither did John choose to forgive and forget in 3 John v.10.
Biblical evidence proves that you more often get bad against you because you are righteous, as in Paul’s ship-wreck, Job, Jesus, Daniel, Moses, Elijah and David.
Biblical evidence exposes that if you have a mood because someone’s not doing it the way you want then you’re doing a Jonah and TELLING God what He’s supposed to do. When you come across a TELL spirit, you can diagnose that it is demonic because it will want to tell you what’s right and wrong and it won’t want to be told.
Repentance
Judas repented because he got caught out and looked bad. In the Greek this is called metamellomai repentance. Peter repented because he owned he had done wrong without shifting the blame to the woman who questioned him and made him do it. This is called metanoio repentance. One is genuine, the other is fake, and, contrary to popular Christian teaching the fake one does not obligate the person who has suffered the offence to forgive and reconcile with the offender.
Naked of spiritual clothing … Rev.3:18
Q. what’s the purpose of eye salve? The answer is … to open your eyes that you are really miserable and naked. Generally God has to take something important away to help you see, and until you see, His knocking is futile. Most people expect God to open their eyes. They wait for Him to do it. They make Him responsible to do it, but you’re responsible to take the rebuke before he knocks and sups. You’ll only open the door when you’re willing to see yourself because you need Him to change what you see.
The rich young ruler talked with Christ but because he didn’t want to see himself and thus it availed him nothing. The prodigal saw himself so when he came to his father he was saved, restored and elevated. Elevation by any other means is pride.
Did you do something wrong even though somebody stirred you to it?
Then take the punishment without explaining it away and without blaming and learn to trust the Heavenly Father’s justice.
Pastor Jim McNaughton
www.e-preacher.org 