A world full of slipping standards – Song of Solomon 2:15
Do you believe that God has a plan for your life?
We all know Jeremiah 29:11
For I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord. Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.
It really is a cool piece of Scripture aye. Yet when you think about what it’s saying, it’s saying the most incredible thing…The God of the heavens and Earth, the creator of all things - has a plan for your life - He knows you personally. That’s pretty out there thinking!!!
Do you believe it?
At the leadership course we are doing on a Wednesday night, on one of the videos the speaker challenged us with that very question.
Do you believe what you believe?
He went on to say…Well if you believe what you believe, it should change the way you live…so, has your life been changed due to the belief that you hold?
So let’s apply that to Jeremiah 29:11
If you believe that God has a plan for your life, then are you living your life in accordance with that plan?
If you’re not then you don’t believe that piece of Scripture even if you say you do…do you see how it works?
God has a plan for each one of our lives whether you choose to believe it or not.
In fact I want to show just how much God has a plan for each one of our lives.
ILL
If we take a look at the first 10 names of the redemptive lineage from Adam – Noah, we see God has a plan for all mankind and His plan includes every individual.
Are you ready for this? Are you sure?
Let this change your life…
Genesis 5
We start with Adam and look at each son through the 10 generations.
ADAM = MAN
SETH = APPOINTED
ENOSH = MORTAL
KENAN = SORROW
MAHALALEL = THE BLESSED GOD
JARED = SHALL COME DOWN
ENOCH = TEACHING
METHUSELAH = HIS DEATH SHALL BRING
LAMECH = THE DESPAIRING
NOAH = COMFORT AND REST
In other words – put all the meanings together and this is what you get:
MAN - APPOINTED MORTAL SORROW, THE BLESSED GOD SHALL COME DOWN TEACHING, HIS DEATH SHALL BRING THE DESPAIRING COMFORT AND REST.
Simply amazing isn’t it but here’s the thing…God had a plan for each of those people and He’s included you in His plan just as much as any one of those other 10.
It is great when you see something like that but how often do you find yourself looking at your heritage going wow! God created me and I’m part of a line up just like the one we’ve looked at.
God has a plan for all mankind and He is using me (of all people) to fulfill it.
I think, truth be known…we don’t think like that very much do we.
Have you ever wondered why?
Maybe we don’t believe the truth of it as much as we used to. Maybe, just maybe, we have accepted little “untruths or lies” about who we are when viewed through the eyes of God.
And the problem is - as we have believed those lies, we’ve started to believe them to such an extent that we’re now living out what we believe.
You see, we can live out the negative things just as much as we can the positive.
We now have people that say “God has a plan for you but it certainly doesn’t extend to me because hey, I’m really no good for anything, anyway”…can you see a subtle change in thinking from what Jeremiah tells us?
What in effect has happened is where, God’s standard (that should be believed and acted on) has now been superseded by a lower standard dreamed up by man and adopted by those that choose to believe and act on that instead.
As a result, what do we find?....The onset of low self esteem in this case.
Unfortunately we are living in a world that’s full of these slipping standards.
Have you ever thought of just how different this world is from when you were growing up?
ILL
~ How Did We Ever Survive as Kids?
April 11, 2009 — Quick Daily Hits - rbs
Born before 1980?
TO ALL THE KIDS WHO SURVIVED the 1930’s 40’s, 50’s, 60’s and 70’s…
• After we were born, we were put to sleep on our tummies in baby cribs covered with bright colored lead-based paints.
• We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets – not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking.
• As infants & children, we would ride in cars with no car seats, booster seats, seat belts or air bags. Riding in the back of a pick up on a warm day was always a special treat.
• We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle. We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.
• We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter but we weren’t overweight because WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!
• We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.
• No one was able to ring us all day on our cellphones, and we were O.K.
• We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.
• We did not have Playstations, Nintendo’s, X-boxes, no video games at all, no TV, no video movies or DVD’s, no surround-sound, CD’s or Ipods! No personal computers, no Internet or chat rooms…
WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!
• We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents.
• We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.
• We made up games with sticks and tennis balls and, although we were told it would happen, we did not poke out very many eyes.
• We rode bikes or walked to a friend’s house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them!
• The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!
We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL!
People change and times change.
In fact the Bible talks about being very cautious when it comes to accepting change…now notice I said cautious!!! I’m not saying change isn’t a good thing.
Song of Solomon 2:15 says:
15 Catch for us the foxes, the little foxes that ruin the vineyards, our vineyards that are in bloom.
Let me give you some background to this verse.
As you know, you have seen plenty of people testing the vintage of a wine. If it’s a great vintage the wine is worth a lot of money.
In vineyards they had two predators…do you know what they were?
1) Large foxes and 2) Small foxes.
Now if a large fox came into the vineyard they would shooo it away. If they didn’t the fox was tall enough to nibble away on the fruit. That was bad.
But the small fox was even worse. It was so bad that if a small fox came in it wasn’t tall enough to take the fruit so it would nibble away at the roots of the vine.
The vineyard owners wouldn’t tolerate the cute aspects of the little foxes because they had the potential to take out entire crops so they would have a loaded gun and they would shoot them dead if they saw them.
In our world we have seen major, major areas of life compromised.
When you think about it, what areas have we tolerated?
Think about the area of Abortion
If I had mentioned this word 20 years ago in this type of forum I would have been shot down, (and I say rightly so) but now there are people making a good living from it. What happened?
Well Gods standard was here and man slowly accepted little slipping changes and now our standards are here and people are making a great living from killing perfectly healthy babies.
The trouble being - it’s happened slowly and subtly.
Let’s think about - What areas have we tolerated in our own lives?
ILL
DVD of Transformers 2
I was given this DVD just last week to watch, I could have but the problem was, it’s still in the movie, that must make it an illegal copy.
All our kids have been on at us to go to the movies to see this and it would have been so easy to say…“oh what the heck”
The problem is that when we say that we fall into the trap that was written about in
Romans 1:24-32 (NIV)
The people of the time were enslaved in worship, worship of anything but God, it says, they knew Him but neither glorified Him, nor gave thanks to Him
Verse 24 says:
24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25 They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, see the lowering of a standard, the acceptance of a little fox and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator God gave them over to the sin of Idolatry.
26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. So now God gives them over to the sin of Immorality. See the downward spiral. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.
But it didn’t stop there. Because of their acceptance of these little foxes, watch this… 28 Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, That’s depravity!!! Moral perversion to do what ought not to be done. 29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31 they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32 Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.
When we accept little foxes into our lives it always (if not addressed) creates this downward spiral. It did back then and it still does today.
If we leave little foxes to nibble away at the roots of our moral belief systems then expect a downward spiral to occur and continue until you have shot your fox.
So what do the little foxes look like in today’s world?
Maybe it’s a pirated DVD, maybe it’s your tongue, maybe it’s gossip, maybe your love for material possessions is overshadowing your love for God. It could even be something like letting TV crowd out your time with God.
They are all little foxes.
Little foxes normally start out being the things that are so small, they seem almost too insignificant to worry about them.
Gods waiting for people to break out of this downward spiral…
But how do we do that?
The answers found in Acts 28:1-6 (NIV)
Ashore on Malta
28 Once safely on shore, we found out that the island was called Malta. 2 The islanders showed us unusual kindness. They built a fire and welcomed us all because it was raining and cold. 3 Paul gathered a pile of brushwood and, as he put it on the fire, a viper, driven out by the heat, fastened itself on his hand. 4 When the islanders saw the snake hanging from his hand, they said to each other, “This man must be a murderer; for though he escaped from the sea, Justice has not allowed him to live.” 5 But Paul shook the snake off into the fire and suffered no ill effects. 6 The people expected him to swell up or suddenly fall dead, but after waiting a long time and seeing nothing unusual happen to him, they changed their minds and said he was a god.
Paul had been through so much…Beaten with rods, abused, Stoned. He’d been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from his own countrymen, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false brothers. 27 He had labored and toiled and had often gone without sleep; he’d been hungry and thirsty; cold and naked.
Now he finds himself shipwrecked…but finally gets ashore, he must be thinking…Yes, I’ve got a break!!! He gets ashore, is surrounded by friendly natives who build a nice big warm fire. Paul’s happily walking over with some wood for the fire when a snake enters the story!!! Can you imagine what Paul thought…surely not!!!
It would make you want to just curl up and die quietly in a corner…after all he had been through.
Now we know the snake must have been highly poisonous because the Islanders who live there are freaking at this snake, they know what sort it is.
Does Paul say…blow it!!! I’m giving up? Not at all
Does he drop to his knees and call out to God to remove it…no he doesn’t.
Now listen!!!
He takes the snake and holds it over the fire and he shakes (more than Elvis ever did I suspect ) until it drops off. Who did the shaking, God or Paul? – Paul did
In this world there are a lot of people with a lot of baggage hanging off them.
The world we live in says it’s ok to have little foxes running around with our kids from an early age and as a result, we have seen Gods standard for life lowered and I believe God has given us over (sound familiar) to these foxes.
My friends, we have a God given responsibility to ensure we hold any snakes that have attached onto to ourselves over the fire of God and with the assistance of the Holy Spirits empowering, to shake those things off that hinder our effectiveness in building the Kingdom of God.
God holds you accountable (not the world) to shoot any little fox that trys to come into your vineyard.
You see Gods plan and purpose for you is to bring Glory to Him. You cannot do that effectively by living to man’s standards. God has set for us a benchmark, found right throughout His Word and said that is the standard for you to live your lives by - if you are to fulfill the plan and purpose He has set for you.
So here’s the big question…How much do you believe what I’ve have just said?
I’m going to end by the way I started
If you believe what you believe, let that belief change the way you live your life from this point onwards.
The world would tell you, “that’s you’re belief just don’t push it on anyone else” but I think we all know, that Gods Word is for all people, therefore, this week if you believe God has challenged you then I’m giving you a challenge which is going to be very controversial.
Shoot any little fox you see entering your vineyard before helping others in love to identify any that might be in theirs.
Gods has created each person here today to produce fruit through your lifetime. When you do this, you please God and fulfill the purposes and plans that He created you for.
Please let this be a positive challenge to us today, God wants to encourage you to become all that He knows you can become.
** Let’s pray **
