Bible Lesson 139
The Foolishness & Fickleness Of Man
“For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh.” Romans 8:3
The dictionary defines fickleness as ‘tricky, deceitful, unstable in affection and loyalty: and it defines foolishness as silly, unwise, without good sense.I believe that a good understanding of the Bible will bear that out. You may be asking yourself, ‘Well, why would brobob want to deal with those two adjectives in line with Bible teaching” Well, my brothers and sisters, I have to deal with it, because the Bible clearly show us that in our fallen state, the state we are born in and remain in until God intervenes in our lives ,to quicken us and bring us from death to life, we are all (everyone) foolish and fickle, (Ephesians 2:1-10).
We are born with the nature that we inherited from our grandfather Adam, and we are selfish, arrogant, and anti-God, as we live lives that demean us as creatures who were created in the image of the Creator. Unfortunately, we have been preached a gospel of cheap grace, that seems to say that we are all fine, just keep on going the way that we are going and all will turn out right and we will see each other in heaven. Listen closely now’..we will see each other again but it won’t be in that beautiful, peaceful and secure place called heaven, it will be in that dark and lonely and tormented place that we know as hell.
We will go there because we have not chosen to know about the Creator and His plans for our lives. That just seems to be too much trouble for us as we live here and act as fools who do not care about anything except the next drink of whiskey, next sexual interlude, next pornographic movie and all that the devil has devised to lure us to hell. In essence we have decided that there must not be a God because things here will not go the way our minute and demented minds would have them go. We don’t find the Bible going along with things that we would like to see ‘.things like abortion (the murder of our children in the womb), we would like to see in many cases God’s way of establishing families distorted and ruined by allowing homosexual marriage.
We as a society that has few values or morals, have presided over the institutionalizing of these very sinful practices, and you and I were a part of it, unless we have done all that we could do to prevent it from happening. In the last couple of years we have seen abortion, homosexuality, and marriage brought out and applauded by this administration and applauded by the people who cast votes for these folks. If that does not prove that we are fickle and foolish, I don’t know what it would take.
The thing that must be hateful to our God, is the fact that many people who support the ones who are pushing these particular sins on America are people who have belonged to churches and who have held themselves out as solid Christians; yet they now have proven that they were never saved. In case you are wondering why I would say that people who support sin and sinners are lost people, it is because the Bible makes it abundantly clear that there will be no sin nor sinners in heaven. Could it be that, these people really did not know that these were heinous sins’ They may say that they didn’t but it does not change anything’. Christians are not sinners with their brains kicked out.
We can begin at the beginning of time here on the earth with the first man Adam. He was made in a state of innocence, he knew nothing of sin, and God warned him about ever eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Adam was foolish when he disobeyed God and ate of that tree and he left you and I and every person born in the world in a miserable state. Just stop and admit that you and I were born foolish’. In fact, foolishness has been bound up in every child born to parents here on this earth. Parents in ages past realized that fact and they used God’s wisdom from His Word, the Bible, to correct that foolishness. (Proverbs 22:15).
Why do you suppose that without exception, mankind is born into the world full of foolishness and fickleness’ The answer to that question is that man is born without Spiritual sense. We were all born unable and unwilling to connect to God. Adam’s sin had damaged our spiritual nature and God would not and man could not change that. Now, God could change it and did in cases, that are verifiable in the Bible, called men out of the world to himself for his uses as they lived on the earth so that God’s eternal plan would go forward. As proof of my statement that we are all born unwilling and unable to connect with God, I would refer you to the first verse of Chapter two of Ephesians chapter Two.
That verse of scripture tells us that we were all born dead in trespass and sin. Ask yourself a question right here’..what have you ever seen a dead man do’ We were alive and walking around but we were sinners without God and strangers in this world. We could not ever connect with God unless God took that step of quickening us. Quickening actually means to bring to Spiritual life, and that means the spiritual life with Christ, that is imparted to believers in their conversion.
You may ask, well, surely there were some who were born with Spiritual life; but you cannot point to any that were born of natural birth who were able to connect with God. Moses was not born as the leader of the Nation of the Hebrews out of Egypt, he was like you and I unable to connect with God, and finally killed an Egyptian who was beating a Jew, and had to run for his life. Nothing is a problem for God and when God got ready to send Moses to Egypt to confront the Pharaoh God prepared Moses by giving him of His Spirit. I am afraid that we as the visible church have begun to think, wrongly, that we are really the captains of our fate, when in reality we are the instruments of God.
You may not like that or even agree with it but if you read your Bible, you have to see that God has a Sovereign universal plan for each and every one of us. Some may agree that God has a plan for the saved of the world but that is just half true, the rest of that truth is that we are, everyone of us, God’s creature. Some of us because of God alone in Christ alone, are God’s children, who were adopted into the family of God after God recreates us in His One and Only Son Jesus Christ, because of our faith in Him that was the result of God’s gift of Grace and Faith. We who are the Children of God were born into this world dead in trespass and sin; but because God had elected us (simply because He willed to elect us), we will be saved in God’s time and because of God’s decree to save us.
Do not think that you were never lost and depraved, because everyone of was. Everyone will remain lost and a candidate for hell until God places that effectual call to life upon us and then God does everything involved in our salvation. In eternity past God’s sovereignty decreed a people to be saved, we call them elect because that is what God calls them (Matthew 24:31; Romans 11:7; 1st Peter 1:2). The elect will all come to Christ at the effectual call of God and they will everyone be saved, born again, and obedient to the Word and Will of God. Remember, when we were born we were born with the nature of Adam (disobedient), and were under the Wrath of God. God would not commune with us, would not hear our prayers, with the exception of our prayer of repentance, and did not save us until He got ready to. It is all part of God’s eternal plan. We have no part in it except to co-operate with God once He begins salvation. Man is too fickle and foolish in the flesh to even want to know God.
There are many questions that exist for most of us about salvation, and the chief question among them is why God has not allowed us all to go to hell for eternity’ We can rightly assume that it is because of God’s attributes, His eternal decrees, His righteous character, and His attribute of love that He save anyone; however we cannot declare anything as the answer except it was because it was God’s will to do it (Psalms 115:3; Psalms 135:6). Whatever God has will and had written down for us is for our good and will work out for our good Psalms 119:89; Psalms 19:7-11; Romans 8:28). Another question is does God really control the saved person by His Holy Spirit’
The answer is secured in your belief in God. Do you think that God could do that and would do that’ He does whether you realize it or agree with it or not, (Ephesians 1:13; Romans 8:9-10,14; Philippians 2:13; Galatians 5:16-26). We can question whether we are elected on the basis of whether God foreknew that they would believe or were they elected that they could believe'(Augustine, Bishop of Hippo) had this to say about that’..”Let us, then, understand the calling whereby they become elected’.not those who are elected because they have believed, but who are elected that they may believe. For the Lord Himself also sufficiently explains this calling when He says, “You have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you.” (John 15:16). Others might ask, well, what part do we play in our own salvation and the Bible answers nothing (Ephesians 2:7-8)
Let’s ask ourselves’.what part did the Apostle Paul play in his own salvation’ He did nothing but the Lord Jesus Christ struck him blind on his way to ferret out those who were followers of Christ to persecute and even kill them. It has been my belief and I have found it true in my own salvation, that the first thing that I realized that God had changed in me was my ‘want to’. Before I was quickened and reborn, I had a want to that was perfectly aligned with the world and I gladly followed that want to. If it wanted to act a fool or be fickle in my life, that what we did. If my want to was to commit any sin, whether it be some trifle or some major sin, that is what we did. I had a ‘want to’ that enjoyed sin and wanted to follow the devil; but then so did you and everyone else that ever lived.
I run into people quite often who do not really think that they were ever lost and undone and a candidate for hell-fire. They think that since they have always gone to church regularly and done their best to be ‘good’ people that they really have no need for any forgiveness. That is not only sad, it is an indication that they have never read and understood or heard with spiritual ears, the truths of the word of God. There are untold millions that really truly, but falsely, believe that God will save anyone who fulfills the standard church formula (admit you are a sinner, believe that Jesus died for your sins, decide to follow Jesus). Now, correctly understood, that is approximately what happens in salvation; but that is simply a mechanical formula which says not much’ and does even less. That leaves out the real power of salvation, which teaches us that we as lost and undone people have no means of ever coming into contact with God, unless He calls us to Himself (Romans 1:7; Romans 8:28-30). God always makes the first move ‘.and every move after that’ in true salvation. We are born not only fickle and foolish, but dead in trespass and sin; and we will never be saved unless and until God issues His effectual call to us.
We are warned by the Psalmists that the fool says in his heart, “There is no God, so if we understand the Scriptures we have to know that everyone of us was born a fool. We didn’t think that there would ever be a judgment, or that God had laid down a path that those who would inherit heaven would walk. If you can’t find yourself in that condition (as a fool), then you are not looking closely enough. We are also told in the Proverbs that “The way of a fool is right in his own eyes.” (Proverbs 12:15). You see we are born fools who really have to be convinced by the Holy Spirit that we are simply fools who are hell bound. Fools are foolish and we are told in the Word of God that “There is desirable treasure, and oil in the dwelling of the wise, but a foolish man squanders it.” (Proverbs 21:20).
God has given mankind all sorts of treasure, and things that we desperately need to have good lives but the foolish come along and squander it, use it for the wrong things or give it away. Further more we are told that “Foolishness is bound up in the heart of children; and that it takes the rod of correction to drive it from them.”(Proverbs 22:15). Most parents in our time have discarded that fact and have thrown away the rod of correction. I imagine that is the reason that we have so many of our young men and women who are so foolish that they do not regard their own lives or the lives of others. If you are still having trouble understanding that you were a fool when you were born, follow God along as He speaks to you and to all of us through the Apostle Paul and says ” For we ourselves were also once foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving various lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another. But when the kindness of the love of God our Savior toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we had done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit.” (Titus 3:3-5). If you need proof that you were born sinful, under the wrath of our Holy God, and fit only for the fire of hell, you have it right there from God.
We mentioned that God has given that message and many others to us through the pen of the Apostle Paul, who wrote much of the New Testament, so what about Him’ was he born a fool too’ He was and owned up to being the greatest sinner, or greatest fool. (1st Timothy 1:15). Paul was so steeped in the error of his day, that He became a crusader against Christ and His way. In fact, Christ struck him blind on the way to Damascus searching for those who followed Christ so that he could punish them. When Christ confronted Him and put him in the dirt at His feet, Paul saw the error of his way and became one of the foremost preachers of that day. That is a picture of salvation and every true salvation conforms in some way to that. Whenever any man is truly saved and changed from a fool for Satan into a fool for Christ, He always ends up, in a way of speaking, at the feet of Jesus Christ, in the dirt.
What about you today’ Have you been truly saved or are you just a nominal, or carnal Christian. Do you know Christ and are you obedient to Him, or are you simply a church member’ That is a pertinent question in our day because so many have been ‘saved’ by the church or convinced that they were saved by the church that we are having a rough time of being the true Church in the world. We are more a social club, or a fraternity or sorority in the community than we are that light that is set upon a hill.
Before we can ever mean anything for Christ , we must become like Christ and believe in Him and speak like Him and live like Him. The Christian is not some level of activity in one of the denominations that gives him the approbation of the people in his circle. The true Christian has to be crucified with Christ, and raised up a new creature who has had the hand of God on and in his life, and has become a different creature, a creature that desires to obey Christ and by the power of Christ in them they do obey Him (John 3:3,5; Ephesians 2: 1- 10; 2nd Corinthians 5:17). The Christian does not just go to church on Sunday, they are the Church every minute of the day and every day of the week.
Is that the way that you operate’ Christianity is not being a churchgoer, it is being part of that invisible church and really obeying the Word and Will of God every day. Does that mean that I don’t believe in the Visible church’ Absolutely not, but you will have to search pretty hard to find a church today that is obeying the Word and Will of God. Now do I believe in denominationalism’ Absolutely not! I do not believe anyone can find denominationalism in the Bible. We should all read and understand and obey the same Bible, which is the inspired, inerrant Word of God. So why have denominationalism’ It seem that we have become people who go for style over substance and that is the problem of denominationalism. I believe that there are some churches that meet and worship with the idea of pleasing God and glorifying Him, but they do not have to walk a line drawn by men who care more about form that about the truth.
We are told how to preach the Word and it is that we are to preach the Word, which means that we take scripture in context and preach it as we apply it to ourselves and to those who sit in the pews. Paul writes and says to Timothy and to us today, “I charge you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead at His appearing and His kingdom: Preach the Word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching . For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables.”
Unfortunately, and shamefully, we reached that point a good many years ago, and we have begun to call preachers instead of seeking out real God called preachers. We have even begun to call sinners and tell them that they are saved with the approval of God. Only God can save a person, yet we insist that we know those who are good candidates for church membership. We now, invite men to come forward in our churches and profess Christ, and we never turn one away. If they walk the aisle and say that they trust Jesus, regardless, of what they know or what they have learned, we accept them into membership. That is the reason that we now have churches that are made up of mixed multitudes and most of them have more who do not know God than those who are true Christians.
Think about what you have read and check out the Scriptures that I have quoted, and ask yourself, about what you believe and how your church looks when the world looks at it.
Until next time,
may God bless and keep you
This is Bro. Bob