There's a reason the grand old gospel hymn, I'm Pressing On the Upward Way, has lyrics like, "I want to live above the world, though Satan's darts at me are hurled," and not, "I want to be a woke social justice warrior, out fighting every cultural ill."
"When it comes to the issue of race, listen, there's a lot of hurtful bigotry and hate in the world, but that kind of bigotry is systemic to your old sin nature," explained Jordan in a recent Sunday morning sermon. "The answer is not in the culture, changing the political/social/economic structure; the answer is in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
"In Christ there is no Jew or Gentile. There's no ethnic distinction in Christ. There's no bond or free, no social distinction, no male or female. The whole issue is you're one in Christ Jesus. There's unity in Christ.
"The answer is in not getting your identity out of the color of your skin or the source of your culture, but getting your identity out of who God made you in His Son. If you live in the assurance and confidence of the identity you have in Jesus Christ, then you live beyond all of those things that plague the flesh.
"The reason for this cauldron of festering rage and hostility out there is a rejection of God's Word. That's all you have when you get rid of God and His Word. There's no peace in the world out there apart from God.
"People say we're going to have peace. Listen, it's like a pressure cooker on the stove just jiggling away and sooner or later the valve blows off. Why do the heathen rage? Why do the people imagine a vain thing? Because their trust is in vanity.
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Paul writes at the end of Ephesians 4: [31] Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice:
[32] And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you.
Jordan says, "Humans experience bitterness; bitterness against your spouse, your job, your life, whatever. But there gets to be a joy in the Believer, because here you are in Christ and that fills your soul and floods out all of the other, and that's the thing that changes and transforms life.
"Empathy is simply the ability to put yourself in somebody else's shoes. When God sent Ezekiel to the nation to prophesy to them about the judgment that was coming on Israel, where they'd been carried away from their land into captivity in Babylon, losing everything they had, the prophet tells them in Ezekiel 3, [14] So the spirit lifted me up, and took me away, and I went in bitterness, in the heat of my spirit; but the hand of the LORD was strong upon me.
[15] Then I came to them of the captivity at Tel-abib, that dwelt by the river of Chebar, and I sat where they sat, and remained there astonished among them seven days.
"Before God said, 'Here's the word I want you to preach to them,' He took Ezekiel by a vision and put him in the midst of the people who were weeping and wailing in Babylon.
"If you want to know the conditions of their hearts, go back to Psalm 137 and read them ask, 'How shall we sing the LORD's song in a strange land?' In the midst of their misery and bitterness, Ezekiel sat there with them for seven days, didn't open his mouth. He identified himself with them; he saw their hurts, their pain, their stress, their anguish. He did all that BEFORE he spoke; before he preached to them.
"That's why Paul says in Ephesians that we're to speak the truth in love. You see, the truth is the truth and it has to be spoken. 'Open rebuke is better than secret love.' Tell people the truth, preach the gospel to them.
"When you do it in love, that's the part where I'm not just stating facts and information, bullhorning it out, but I'm able to come where they are and bring it to them personally. It's the application right in the midst of the hurts and fears.
"I say all that because that's exactly what God did for us. When I think about empathy, Jesus Christ is God's empathy. God literally came down into our humanity and walked in our shoes. Hebrews 2 says He was 'tempted in all points like as we are yet without sin.'
"Hebrews 4 says the Hebrews have a high priest that can be touched by the feelings of our infirmities. What God Himself did is He didn't just pronounce; He literally came and took upon Himself our humanity, touched by our feelings and the things that cause us struggle.
"When you go through the troubles, trials, turmoils, tribulations of life, you don't go to just a transcendent holy other. He is that, but you go to one who's been TOUCHED; who's entered into your experience.
*****
"The world we live in isn't getting better, folks. Understand that! The world is winding downward. In Romans 18, Paul calls it 'the present suffering.' That's the time we live in. In I Corinthians 7, he calls it 'the present distress.' In II Timothy 3, he says that 'in the latter days perilous times shall come.' That's the nature of the world we live in until the Lord Jesus Christ comes and sets up HIS kingdom.
" . . . And the only sure source of trusted information; you know, you hear so much about 'fake news.' Everything out there is fake, folks. The only trusted source of information is that Book; it's God's Word. And it has to be God's Word rightly divided or it isn't even that. The most dangerous thing you can do is to use God's Word without rightly dividing it; be scriptural but not dispensational. That's destructive to your spiritual life, according to II Peter 3.
"What you're seeing with COVID-19 is all of the Charismatic Pentecostal faith-healing prosperity preachers exposed as frauds. Listen, President Trump has an evangelical advisory counsel praying over him that's led by a Charismatic Pentecostal woman preacher, Paula White. She claims to have visions from God, words of prophecy, healing.
"If there was any truth in what she and Trump's cadre of like-minded preachers say, when the virus started, Paula could have gotten on the phone and said, 'Hey, Don, don't worry about bending the curve; we'll take care of it for you.' They didn't do that.
"Last year, not a one of these prophecy preachers said, 'Hey, we better get ready, there's a pandemic coming.' They're frauds! What they claim is not just unscriptural; it's an outright lie, and the events of life came along and demonstrated that.
"Think of unsaved people looking at all that, realizing, 'Well, if that's your God, He's useless!' These phonies are making more atheists than the atheists are. An atheist says there's no God. A six-year-old kid who flunked kindergarten can look in the mirror and know there's a God. That's the most obvious fact of all creation. Everybody knows that one."
(new article tomorrow for sure--I just came back from a road trip that went longer than expected due to personal business complications)
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