Sermon Tone Analysis

Before you begin your Bible study, as a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, be sure you have named your sins privately to God the Father.

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

(Known, Unknown and Forgotten sins) (1Jn 1:9)

 

 

You will then be in fellowship with God, Filled with the Holy Spirit and ready to learn Truth from the Word of God.

 

"God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in Spirit and Truth," (John 4:24)

 

 

 

Divine Thinking And Righteousness ---Virtue --- Divine Good: (ABSOLUTE) VS.

Satanic and Human Thinking and Self-righteousness --- Emotional --- Satanic and Human Good: (RELATIVE)

 

       The futility of human do-goodism

 

       I suppose that at some time or other everyone has a "good" thought.

Probably even the worst characters who ever lived have had some kind of a "good" thought, even if only in childhood.

Perhaps you can recall a time when you said, “I’d like to do something that really counts.

I’d like to do something for people.

“I’d like to be able to help people and to help them in a permanent fashion.”

You can hardly read history without wanting to do something for people.

And yet the first thing you learn from history is that even the greatest people who have ever lived have had very little influence beyond their own generation, much less forever.

One of the most brilliant men of all time, Julius Caesar, had a tremendous influence, not only on his own generation, but for nearly five hundred years thereafter.

He restored order out of chaos and brought to an end civil war and bloodshed which had been going on within the Roman Republic for over a hundred years.

In five years’ time, he developed a system which made it possible for Rome to continue for approximately another five hundred years.

Now, here is a very rare man, one out of millions, who was able in his own lifetime to do something that had influence for several generations; yet, in spite of his genius, the Roman Empire eventually fell.

A study of the brief history of our own country will reveal some very "noble and very wonderful" men; yet their influence rarely extended much beyond their day — sometimes for a generation or two — after which their influence all seems to disappear.

As we consider our own country today, we wonder where is all of the nobility, where is all of the tremendous Thinking and the power and the ability of those men whose Concepts and Ideas have complied with the Word of God and made our nation a wonderful country?

And as you contemplate the entire world, you have to ask again, “Where are the people who have influenced the world the great people?”

In modern history, one or two have arisen out of the masses; but these are only one or two out of millions and billions of people.

Yet there are still people in every generation who have an intense desire to help humanity and have tried to express it in various ways.

One of these was Albert Schweitzer.

In his desire to help humanity, he studied many things, including medicine, through which he tried to fulfill this desire.

He went to Africa; and during the course of his lifetime, Schweitzer was able to help thousands of people, as far as their health was concerned.

Many of the natives of Africa almost worshipped him as if he were God, even though he was a white man.

Yet today, where is the influence of Albert Schweitzer?

He was a "good man;" he was sincere and did many wonderful things; but he did not bring about any permanent change.

The natives have gone back to their tribal fraternities; and, as before, they are waiting in jungle paths to kill other natives in other fraternities.

Furthermore, they are killing off the animals; they’re killing the white man.

They haven’t learned anything!

Their nature hasn’t been changed!

/I said to myself concerning the sons of men, "God has surely tested them //in order for them to see that they are but beasts."//

/(Eccles 3:18)

 

       So, here’s a man who went to Africa and spent a lifetime out there doing many wonderful things; but he brought about no lasting changes for the Africans.

In fact, the passage we are going to study compares him to a flower of the field.

As far as we can tell from the study of his life, his good was “relative good.”

It is a rather discouraging world for altruistic people.

There are those who would sincerely like to be helpful; also there are many frustrated people who are trying to help but have only succeeded in messing things up because they don’t know how to help.

For example, thousands of people today would like to abolish poverty.

Let’s assume for a moment that the “War on Poverty” is sincere; (A debater’s assumption, meaning it isn’t necessarily true).

In their sincerely deceived desire to abolish poverty, those planning the program propose giving money to everyone whom they consider to qualify under the category of poverty.

It sounds like a "noble" idea, until you look at it from God's Viewpoint, for Jesus said, “...For you always have the poor with you...” (Matt 26:11) “Always” means that poverty cannot be abolished!

But let’s say it is a beautiful idea and look at it from its altruistic concept.

How does it work?

Well, you refloat the money, the money invariably goes into the hands of a few, and soon everyone else is poverty-stricken.

What do the poor do when they get the money?

They spend it!

And where does it go?

It goes to a small group of people who will become wealthier than ever.

Soon someone runs out of the pork barrel, and there is more poverty than ever.

But it’s a "noble" idea!

So you can see it’s a very frustrating world for people who want to do “good.”

Seek the LORD while He may be found; Call upon Him while He is near.

Let the wicked forsake his way (Of unbelief in Christ) And the unrighteous man his thoughts; (Believers using human sin nature sentiment, emotion and thinking to live their life) And let him return to the LORD, And He will have compassion on him, And to our God, For He will abundantly pardon.

(Prov 1:23) "For My Thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways," declares the LORD.

"For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways And My Thoughts than your thoughts.

(Isa 55:6-9)

 

       Now, there are a lot of places where "good" can be done, but nothing seems to come from all of this doing "good."

There are some sincerely deceived people in the world right now who are trying to abolish warfare.

“Let’s get everyone to give up his weapons and have world peace,” they say.

So when you take guns from the nations that have a sense of responsibility and disarm them, all you do is to turn the whole world into a jungle.

There are mothers who march on Washington every year or so in the hopes of abolishing war.

Well, this, too, is a beautiful satanic thought, because no one really wants to go to war, with the possible exception of a few romanticists who have read too many war books or seen too many war movies that glamorize war.

But once you get to war, it’s no fun at all.

The food is terrible; the pay is worse.

And even more than that, you might lose your life any day on the job!

So you can see that war is really no picnic, even though it has been romanticized in some ways.

But no matter how good the idea of abolishing war may seem, the Bible declares that there shall continue to be “wars and rumors of wars,” and that “nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.”

(Matt 24:6-7) Men shall say “peace, peace, when there is no peace.”

(Jer 6:14; Mic 3:5) And “when they shall say, Peace and safety, then sudden destruction cometh upon them.”

(1Th 5:3) Only Jesus Christ can bring peace, (Psa 46:9; Hag 2:9) and He will; when He returns to earth.

(Isa 2:4; Mic 4:3) Until then, it is utter folly to try to “turn the swords into pruning hooks”!

(Joel 3:10 )

       There are also very altruistic people who are trying to abolish crime by getting rid of guns.

Even now, they are attempting to pass gun legislation in Congress whereby guns will be taken out of the hands of law-abiding citizens; and they imagine that this will solve all the problems.

Actually, it will only make it easier for the criminals, and both criminals and crime will increase!

Gun legislation won’t solve anything, nor will world disarmament nor an international court!

But all the “liberal do-gooders” have these false satanic ideas.

In fact, there is one great religious organization in this country that has as one of its basic tenets: “let Red China into the United Nations, and this will solve the world’s problems.”

(They are now, and no change)

       The trouble with all these do-good projects is that they do not line up with the Word of God, even though many times the people are sincere.

(And we’re not even considering here the ones who are not sincere, such as do-goodism in politics, which has made hypocrites out of thousands of people) But the sincere do-goodism of our day has complicated everything.

Instead of helping people for any length of time, much less for eternity, it is actually making conditions worse, because all this is Satan's false thinking, which in the long run accomplishes nothing.

So, as I say, it is a frustrated world; and because it is a frustrated world, I should like to propose to you the answer which was given by God to Isaiah back in 700 B.C.

 

       Do-goodism in Judah

 

       The do-gooders were very much in evidence in those days, and, like today, they were all frustrated.

We hear a familiar strain from these do-gooders of Judah, for they said in effect, “Let’s abolish our cavalry.”

And when they abolished the Jewish cavalry, the Rabshakeh of Assyria stood up in front of the walls of Jerusalem and challenged: “Look, my king has several thousand extra horses from his cavalry; we will even supply you horses, if you can provide riders for the mounts and then well whip you!” (Isa 36:8-9)

       When the Assyrians finally came, all that the Jews had left in their disarmament program were their fortifications, which slowed down the Assyrians for one year.

Now, the Jewish state department not only abolished the military, but they also had a “foreign aid program”; they made certain economic concessions to the Assyrians.

(2Ki 18:14-16) For five years before the Assyrians invaded, Hezekiah sent millions of dollars of the taxpayers’ money to them.

Every Jew actually paid two-tenths of his income as a tax: one-tenth for the upkeep of the Temple, (Lev 27:30-33) and one-tenth for the priesthood.

(Num 18:21) Every third year, one-tenth went to the poor of the land.

(Deut 14:28-29) Although today it is incorrectly called “tithing,” it was actually a system of taxation for believer and unbeliever alike in the land of Judah.

Offerings were the Spiritual giving of the believer, (Deut 16:17) cf.

(2Co 8:1) thru (2Co 9:15) over and above the tithe.

But what happened to a large portion of their taxes?