Hey man, good to see you tonight, please open your Bibles to Colossians chapter 3 Colossians chapter 3 We'll begin reading there in verse 1 we'll read down to verse 4 Colossians chapter 3 beginning of verse 1 Paul said, therefore, if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on the earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory. Amen. In 1974, some of you may remember, there was a high wire artist by the name of Philippe Petit and he walked a steel cable that went from one twin tower to the other twin tower. And so he was about 1,350 feet above the ground. And of course, there was no net to catch him if he had a misstep. And the cable itself was only centimeters wide that he had walked on. So when he stepped off the ledge of the twin tower, the first twin tower, onto the cable, his hands gripped very tightly a 26-foot balancing pole to help him keep his balance for the journey across the wire. Now, he said that the real trick to tightrope walking is to keep your posture straight and to lower your center of gravity. You lowered your center of gravity by bending your knees, of course, and by holding the pole lowly. And as you would walk across the cable, the cable arm, if you're walking on a rope, has a tendency with every step you take to turn just a little bit. And one of the purposes of the pole was to give you that second or two to adjust your balance back and reposition your body against the turning of the wire. And there's a sense in which the Christian life we walk is kind of like that. We're walking between the present and the future. Our pole that we grip lightly to to help us make the journey across time is called the Word of God. The Word of God is what keeps us in balance as we're walking from the present and into the future. The Word of God keeps us from getting off balance. But today we're finding that the Word of God and the truths of the Gospel are being infiltrated by what I've been calling the positive mental attitude movement. And it's suddenly influencing the preaching of God's Word and the power of the Holy Spirit is being lost because we're living more in the power of the mind than we are in the power of the Holy Spirit. And if you're a child of God, you're a new creation in Christ. And that means that you don't use worldly philosophies You don't use worldly ideas and you don't use worldly programs to live out your life. You're a new creation of Christ. You are empowered by the Holy Spirit. But because of what I believe the influence of the Positive Mental Attitude Movement, we have now psychologized the Bible And we preach messages today on how to have success and how to be successful and how to have financial success and how to have, you know, success in marriage, which is not all bad. Ten steps to peace or seven steps to joy and all of that kind of stuff that's come Known today as as preaching and a lot of that is the influence of the power of the mind The power of the mind which was brought about by the positive mental attitude movement what you need as a child of God more than anything in your life is the power of the Holy Spirit now I say that and I see all that but but I I don't want to give you the idea that what I want to emphasize tonight is that we need to strike some kind of a balance. Some kind of a balance between what the Bible tells us about the reality of us being sinners and the reality of our future being as saints as well. Last week I talked about the fact that the positive mental attitude movement people don't balance their teachings. They don't take into account the reality that there is sin in this world and that we are sinners. There is a negative aspect to our lives whether we like it or not. Sin is part of this world and you cannot go through life Ignoring the reality of sin there is a reality of a negative aspect Because of the sin in this world and like it or not we have to deal with it now the Bible says that the way that you begin to deal with that is to acknowledge the reality of it and then come to Jesus Christ as your personal Savior and become a new creation in Christ and be empowered to live life in the power of the Holy Spirit One of the things, and you know this, this is one of my, what do you call it when you stand on something, you preach it over and over again? Soapbox. What? Soapbox. Soapbox. This is my soapbox. I have a problem with this. You know, this is not the first time you've heard this. But today we've, and I really believe this is part of the positive mental attitude movement. is that we have gotten away, and it bothers me, I don't know why it bothers me, it bothers me, that we have gotten away from preaching the gospel at funerals. That bothers me. And we come together today and we say we're gonna celebrate life. You know? And so what we do is we come together and we talk about how good this person was and what this person accomplished and how much we love them and all that they have contributed to our lives, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And we ignore the elephant in the room. They're dead. They died. They're in a casket. And the reason they're there is because of sin. And the only hope this person has is faith in Jesus Christ. But we totally today in our preaching of funerals and stuff, we totally ignore that somehow or another. We don't want to deal with the reality that they died because of sin. And the only thing that can deal with sin is Jesus Christ. And that's all. That's the message. That this person's hope for the future is in the resurrection which came through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. There is the joy of the gospel. There is the hope that people need to hear when somebody has passed away. There is the triumph that we have in Christ, lest I be considered some kind of an ogre or killjoy, there is a positive side to being Christians. There's no doubt about that. We are victorious in Jesus Christ. We are a new creation in Jesus Christ. We are believers in Jesus Christ. We have a lot to be thankful for. We do rejoice in the wonderful, incredible life that we can have on this earth because of who Jesus Christ is. You look at the Bible, particularly the Sermon on the Mount, and you see in the Sermon on the Mount this tremendous message of joy that we can have as believers in Jesus Christ. It's one of the main features of the book of Philippians, that we can be joyful and that we can be victorious. And the Christian has more to rejoice about than anything that the positive mental attitude group can possibly ever give to you. And our joy is based on the true reality of the Bible, presented in the Bible, folks. It is in the complete understanding of God's plan for redemption. We don't stop just at the beginning of God's plan of redemption, and we don't focus only on the end of God's plan of redemption. You say, well, what is God's plan of redemption? Let me give you four principles. Actually, I'll give you two aspects of God's plan of redemption. The first one is simple. It's the four aspects to God's plan of redemption. There's the creation of the world. There's the fall of humanity into sin. There's the cross of Christ and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And then there is the promise of Christ's return and the fact that we're going to live in a new heaven and a new earth. There's a guy by the Ken Ham. I read some of his stuff. I like a lot of his stuff. He calls it the seven seas of history. He says there's creation, there's corruption, there's catastrophe, there's confusion, there's Christ, there's the cross, and then there's the consummation. Of course, he's talking about the glorious return of Jesus Christ. and our eternal home with God in heaven above. For the Christian, for the Christian life is not just a matter of mind over matter. We have a plan. God has a plan for us. It's called the plan of redemption. It's gonna be consummated when Jesus Christ comes back and takes us into our heavenly home. And the child of God strives to be the best he can, not just so he can be the best that he can. We strive to be the best we can in a fallen world so that ultimately we can give glory to God. for the plan of redemption that he's going to finish in us through Jesus Christ. How we do in this world, how much fame we have, how much fortune we have is of no consequence to us. The only thing that we really care about is we demonstrate the life of Jesus Christ and then whatever that life is, is the calling of God and the will of God for our lives. Christ is going to come back. But when he comes back, we're going to have an accounting of how we have lived our lives in the power of the Holy Spirit. When Christ comes back, we're going to have an accounting of our lives and how we have lived in the power of the Holy Spirit. Now, what I want to do tonight is I want to take a few minutes here I'm not going to spin along here. There's tons of verses that I could point you to that are taken out of context by the Positive Mental Attitude Movement people. We're going to look at a couple of them, okay, to make my point tonight. verses as all heresies do they all take verses out of their Context and again, that's one of my hobby horses. I get in and ride it all the time You know, you got to put verses in context to understand them That's the way God meant for us to study the Bible understand the Bible, but oftentimes these people will take verses that are meant for our future and say, okay, this is the way our current life is. These verses that God designed for our future, they take out of context, they say, okay, this is your best life now. This is the good life now. And they apply those future verses to your present life and secondly what they do is they take some of the promises that God gave to the nation of Israel and they make those promises that God gave to the nation of Israel as though they apply to Christians today. So they strip them out of their historical context. Let me give you an idea of what I'm talking about. Okay. I want you to turn to Jeremiah chapter 29 verse 11. And some of you already know this verse. Okay. Jeremiah 29 11. This is kind of like their flagship verse. It's a great verse. It's a wonderful verse in many ways. But I want to share something with you. I want to share the truth about this verse. Jeremiah 29, 11. And I hear this verse quoted all the time. Jeremiah is prophesying. In verse 11 of chapter 29, he says, For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope. Like I said, this is one of the flagship verses of the positive mental attitude movement. People, my purpose here is not to disappoint you or to discourage you, but this is not a promise that God gave for you to claim. It's a great verse, it's a wonderful verse, you know, but this verse was a promise that was given to the ancient tribe of Judah when they were in Babylonian captivity. And God was telling them, look, you rebelled against me. You went against everything that I told you. You refused to repent. And therefore, I am going to bring the Babylonians upon you, and they're going to take you into captivity, and you're going to stay in captivity. But your captivity is not going to be forever. And that's what he's telling them in this verse. He's telling the Judeans that, look, I have a future for you. You're only going to stay in captivity, Babylonian captivity, for 70 years. At the end of that period, I am going to bring you out and I'm going to take you back to the promised land. This verse is not a universal verse, okay? Promised to all believers at all times. It is not. And I know that a lot of people are going to get up in arms when I say that, folks, but this verse was given to the tribe of Judah for the time that they were in Babylonian captivity. If you must apply a Christian New Testament principle to this verse, I would say that the principle that you need to tie to this verse is your future resurrection. That's how much future that we're looking at in this verse. Your future hope that Jeremiah is talking about here, if we're going to apply it to us today, I would say has only to do with God's complete plan, his future plan, his ultimate plan, which is going to be your resurrection because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Okay, that's what he's talking about there. Now I want you to turn to Proverbs. Let's just look at one more example. We're going to quit It'll make my point and that'll be enough but Proverbs chapter 23 Proverbs chapter 23 Okay And you're familiar with this verse as well, but Proverbs chapter 23, I want you to look there verse 7, okay Whatever version you have it probably says something like this somewhere in that verse it says For as he thinks within himself, or as he thinks within himself, so he is. Oftentimes, people will quote that verse of the positive mental attitude, or that phrase, really. Not the verse, but that phrase. As a man thinks within himself, so he is. And what they try to tell you is, okay, what God is saying there, is God is saying that you gotta have positive thoughts. You've got to think within yourself, and so he is. You've got to think these positive thoughts. You've got to make positive confessions. And if you do that, you will be a positive person. And then if you're that way, good things will happen to you. You're going to change your circumstances. You're going to change your situation if you just Think these positive things. Your mental attitude is going to make you, your thoughts are going to shape your destiny, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Okay? Now, is there some truth to those ideas? Didn't Paul say here that we are to set, in our text verse, we're to set our minds on things above? Isn't that what Paul said? Yes, it is what Paul said. He commanded us to set our minds on things above. Didn't Paul say, if there's any excellence and if there's anything worthy of praise on it, that we are to think on these things? Did not Paul say those things? Indeed, he did say those things, okay? But I want you to look really at what is being said here in Proverbs. Let's look at Proverbs. I hope you're still there. I want you to back up to verse 6 because I want you to get the context of what's going on here. Look at Proverbs 23 and then look at beginning verse 6. He says, Do not eat the bread of a selfish man. That ought to be a clue to you. Do not eat the bread of a selfish man or desire his delicacies. For as he thinks within himself, so he is. He says to you, eat and drink, but this heart is not with you. You will vomit up the morsel you have eaten and waste your compliments. Look, beloved, that has nothing to do whatsoever with having a positive mental attitude. It is a warning. He's saying, do not eat the bread of a selfish man. It is a warning to keep your guard up when you are around selfish people. That's what he's saying, that the writer is warning them. Don't think like an egotistical, selfish person, lest you begin to act like them and learn their ways. This has nothing to do with changing your circumstances. This has nothing to do with changing your situation, or becoming a success in your life, or your life getting better, or getting a raise, or whatever the case may be. It doesn't say anything like that there. Nothing to do with that. It's a couple of, but it's a verse that the positive mental attitude people use. They take it out of context. Listen, there is a perfect age coming. You know, there is a time when sin is going to be eradicated. There is going to be a time when everything is new. There is going to be a time when there's no loss, and there's no uncertainty, and there's no financial reverses, and you don't get divorces, and there aren't any sickness, and none of this stuff's going to happen. There is a time that's going to come. But not now. You've got to grip the pole. You're walking from the present to the future. But you've got to grip the pole, which is the Word of God. You've got to hold tightly to the truths of the Word of God. The pole keeps you in balance. The Word of God keeps you in balance. The Bible tells us that our salvation is past, it is present, and it is future. It is all of those things. Matter of fact, I want you to turn with me. Would you do that? I want you to go to another passage of Scripture, and I want to look at these three time frames. Ephesians chapter 2, you know this passage, but I want you to turn and I want you to look at it with me. Ephesians chapter 2, okay? There is a past sense in our salvation. Those of us who are in Christ are already saved. We're already saved. Nothing can change that. But I want you to turn to Ephesians. I want you to read it with me here. Okay? Because I want to emphasize it. It seems like when you read something, you emphasize it more, you remember it more. But I want you to turn to Ephesians chapter 2 and verse 8. Chapter 2 and verse 8, okay? Ephesians 2 and 8. For by grace you have been saved past. You have been saved through faith. And that not of yourselves, it is a gift of God. Not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. For you are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them. Paul wants us to know that we're saved. But we weren't saved on the basis of anything that we have done or could do We have you know, it's it's he says look the reality is you can't save yourself. It's an impossibility It has to be the work of god and since it is the work of god Then nothing can change what god has done. If god's done it is complete folks that god doesn't leave anything incomplete You don't have anything to do with it God gives it to you as a gift. You receive it through faith. You can't lose your salvation. You can't lose it. God gave it to you. You received it. Elsewhere in the book of Romans, Paul explains the process. He says, God justified you by depositing into your account the righteousness of Christ. You were spiritually bankrupt, but now you are rich because you possess the righteousness of Jesus Christ. And as a result of that, God has adopted you as his child. And you have access then to all the blessings of heaven. Nothing can change that. You have been saved. God declared you righteous. You are eligible to inherit everything that the Heavenly Father has for you. Nothing's going to change that. Now look with me at 1 Corinthians chapter 1. Not only is our salvation passed and sealed, it is also something present. It is also something present. I want you to go to 1 Corinthians 1. Would you join me there? 1 Corinthians 1. There's a lot that could be said here, but we're only going to carry on one point. And look at verse 18 with me. 1 Corinthians 1.18. Paul wrote, for the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved. To us who are being saved, present. It is the power of God. Present what do you mean by being saved? Well, there's we have a word in Christian Christian or Christian world that we use it's called being sanctified It's it's a sanctifying act. The Holy Spirit is within us. He's affecting a change in your life if you're a child of God and If you are a child of God, you will be changed. The Holy Spirit is not going to let you stay the same. He will not give you rest. He's constantly going to be convicting you and conforming you to the image of Jesus Christ. Look, if you can miss church, If you can get into the habit of missing church and you don't have any problem with that, something's wrong. If you can get into the habit of not reading your Bible, something is wrong because I'm going to tell you, the Holy Spirit is going to draw you to the Word of God. The Holy Spirit is going to draw you to God's people. If you can be saved and say, well, I don't need baptism, or you can be saved and say, I don't need the church, I don't need any of that stuff, you know, the Holy Spirit won't leave you alone. Those are the very basics of being a child of God. The Holy Spirit is going to draw you toward baptism. The Holy Spirit is going to draw you toward church membership. That's the way that He works. He won't leave you alone. He wants you to conform to the image of Jesus Christ. Then there's the future. then there's the future of our salvation. It's just as real as the past, just as real as the present as well. So I want you to join me in Romans chapter 5. Romans chapter 5, verse 9. Paul speaks of a future. He said in verse 9 of Romans chapter 5, much more than having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved." We shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. He says the shedding of the blood of Christ in the past also secures for us a future because God doesn't measure your success, quote unquote, or your favor or your failure, quote unquote. by the position you have in your company, by whatever social status you might have, by the kind of car you drive, or the kind of house you live in, or the kind of clothing that you wear, where you go on vacation, or how nice you look, or whether you're average looking, good looking, or not so good looking, the education you have, your yearly income, how important you are, how many people know you or don't know you, or how wide your influence is. God doesn't measure you by that. Whether you look at yourself and think that you're a failure, or whether you look at yourself and think you are a success, or whether the world looks at you and says you're a failure, or whether the world looks at you and thinks that you're a success, that doesn't matter to God. That isn't how He measures us. The question is, are you going to go to hell? Do you have your future secured through Jesus Christ? Are you going to escape the wrath of God through Jesus Christ? Or are you going to be separated forever and forever and forever separated? Are you gonna go to heaven? Or are you gonna spend eternity with God? Jesus said, what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? There is the best to come, beloved. And it is in the future. We're in the present, but we're walking on that tightrope toward the future that Jesus Christ has secured for us through His blood. I hope that's true with you. I would hope that if I could ask you to give me your testimony of salvation tonight, if I could ask every one of you to stand up and say, give me your testimony of salvation, what would you say? Did you have that assurance of your future locked up in Jesus Christ's shed blood on the cross for you? Do you have that assurance? God, I pray that you do. I pray that you do. Well, I appreciate you being here tonight. I appreciate you being in God's house this evening.