Spiritual dangers: Flee

What's on my mind for this conference will fit in a little with what we've ended with with our brother John about the dangers and the shepherds that watch. John chapter 13 and really what's on my mind is the reality of spiritual dangers. The reality of spiritual dangers.

Now as I was thinking about that, that's almost hard to define. When we think of physical dangers and we think of our young people and older people, we think of a life that is maybe hurt or wounded. They get into danger and they get hurt.

At the greatest extreme, it is a life that is wasted. A life that is cut short. And so when danger comes and we're preyed to danger, we are either wounded or we are lost when danger strikes.

So with that in mind, what we're going to look at in John chapter 12 and at verse number 25, well verse 24, wonderful verse, The Lord Jesus says, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone. But if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. He that loveth his life shall lose it.

And he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal. If any man serve me, let him follow me. And where I am, there shall also my servant be.

If any man serve me, him will my father honor. Now we're going to read some more in the epistles of Paul in just a moment. But when we think about a life that, Christian life, a spiritual life that is wounded, that is crippled, what does that look like? What does that look like? Well, you take it to the natural realm and you see animals that have been wounded or crippled or even human beings physically, and that person or that animal cannot function the way it was intended to function.

That wound has such crippled it to the fact that it cannot be used for its intended purpose. Now you as a saved person, as a saved individual, you have an intended purpose. And when spiritual danger strikes and it wounds us, and some of you here have been wounded, you have those scars on the inside that no one else can see.

You have those things that come to mind that you cannot be used as God would want you to be used. This is reality. Spiritual dangers are real.

They're real. And so when you think about, especially the young folks here today, a whole life, if the Lord be not come, may be 60 years saved on the way to heaven. And if the danger befalls you as a young person, it could cripple you for the rest of your life to be what God wanted you to be.

Spiritual dangers are real. And there are some that aren't among us today where the spiritual danger has ruined them. They can't function really hardly at all for God.

And we know it will qualify that. We know that restoration and things like that are real. But spiritual danger is a great threat, not only to the young here today, but for the middle aged and for the older.

So we're going to look here in John chapter 12 of the idea of loving his life and losing it. What that basically means to sum it up is this, that those of us that live for self are going to lose our life. If we do not deny self, if we just go on for the desires of self and go on and live how we want to live, the way we want to live it, and we miss out on the purposes of our salvation, and the purpose of being purchased, we are bought with a price, and therefore glorify God in your body and your spirits which are His, we will miss out on that.

If we live for self in this world, we will. We could become a shipwreck. We could fall out by the way.

And we could become a castaway. And sadly, never be used for what God intended us to be used for. Now when you think of the life of the Lord Jesus, at the age of 12, He was about His Father's business.

Any 12 year olds here today, saved by God's grace, you can be about your Father's business. You say, but He was God manifest in the flesh. He was.

But He was a normal 12 year old. He grew in grace and stature in the favor of God and man. And so listen, if you're 12 years old, and you can go lower than that, but you can be used of God.

And so, the realities of spiritual dangers, recognizing spiritual dangers. We know that there is the world and the flesh and the devil, they are our enemies. They are what is seeking to destroy us.

And so when we come into life, even just to take a practical application, we teach our young people to recognize danger. We teach them to recognize that car that pulls up beside them and ask them if they want to see the puppy, or he wants them to have the candy. We teach them to recognize spiritual or physical dangers.

Don't do this and don't do that. But sometimes spiritual dangers are harder to recognize. What are the reactions to spiritual dangers? Well when we're facing danger in an ordinary life, there are generally three reactions.

Could be a combination of all. Either we freeze. There are people when they are faced with danger, they absolutely freeze.

And there are some of them that fight. I know a man, if you go up and scare him, you might not have all your teeth when you're done scaring him. He's quick, he's fast, he's powerful, but he fights.

And then there's others that flee. And when it comes to the spiritual dangers, there are the same three reactions. There are times that we are going to freeze.

We are going to stand still and see the salvation of the Lord. We will be brought into situations in life where we have absolutely nowhere to run. We cannot move.

We are stuck in this spot wherever we are and we'll have to freeze. If we run, it'll be death. If we fight, it won't work.

We'll have to freeze. We'll have to stand still. And you can follow that line of ministry down, but that's not my exercise today.

We could fight. And yes, we are to earnestly contend for the faith. We are to fight a good fight.

And there are times that we as Christians will have to fight the spiritual battle. And that's another line. But what is on my heart for this conference at this time is to flee.

To flee. To run away. To run away.

So the three responses are to freeze, to fight, or to flee spiritual danger. Now we're going to go to the epistles and we're going to look at the four times that Paul uses the word flee. So Paul's flees.

Not the itchy flees, but the flees to run. Paul's flees. We're going to start.

We'll probably just take these one at a time. In 2 Timothy 2, we'll break in at verse 22. Paul is writing to Timothy.

And these are almost in a chronological order, kind of in my mind. We're going to start with the youthful lust. It says, He says, flee also youthful lusts, but follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart.

William's song that he gave out at verse number 3 said, Went unto thee I flee, Jesus my Lord. Went unto thee I flee. So he's teaching here now to flee youthful lusts.

Now the idea here is especially that which is forbidden. Forbidden desires. A youthful lust.

A lust is a desire. And when things that are forbidden are desired for, James would tell us this. He said, Then when lust is conceived, it bringeth forth sin, and when sin is finished, it brings forth death.

And so here's a spiritual danger. The idea of a youthful lust and that which would bring forth death. The danger.

The consequence. And so there are many different ideas, examples of youthful lusts, but I'm thinking particularly we're going to get into the fornication aspect in just a moment. So we're going to look at the others.

What are some youthful lusts? There's a desire in every one of us to fit in as a youth. To fit in. To be in the popular group.

And so for you young people, if you're at school, and maybe you're like I used to be, you'll never believe this, but I used to be shy and awkward, and something happened. I'm still awkward, but I'm not really shy. What are you going to do when the cool kids come up and say, Hey, why don't you come hang out with us at the park? What are you going to do? You've always wanted to be part of the gang.

You've always wanted to fit in with them, and so you go with them to the park. And there you are with those friends, and all of a sudden they're doing something. Maybe they're starting to do drugs.

What are you going to do? Instantly, you're going to be panicking, because you know that is wrong. But what's the desire is going to win? Is it going to be maintain my purity from drugs, or is it going to be cool and to fit in? Many a young person has given in. And don't think you're any different.

You flee. You have to flee that situation. You can't freeze in that situation and stay there.

It'll be easier the next time. It'll go a little further the next time. And in fact, I would suggest this, you have to flee the friends.

You have to flee that danger. And so there's the youthful lust of being popular. There's the youthful lust of entertainment.

Entertainment. And we like to be entertained. We like to have our minds occupied.

We like to have our minds in neutral. And just to give some examples, you know, what are you going to do with TikTok? You know what TikTok is? Is you're wasting your life watching somebody else waste theirs. I've been on it.

I'm not a subscriber to it, but I had to see what it was about. And pretty soon you're looking and looking and looking and looking and... You know what you've got to do? You've got to flee. You've got to flee that.

And that's a milder app on the phone. And what about the games? The games. Some people like to game for their entertainment.

I can tell you this, if you fall in the spiritual danger of gaming, you're going to waste half your life behind a screen. It's addicting. TikTok is addicting.

Drugs are addicting. Gaming is addicting. It does something in your brain.

Physically, chemically in your brain. And if we could compile in this audience alone, the hours that were spent this past week on social media, on games, I hope not on drugs, how many hours would it be? There's 300 people here and you spent 10 hours. 3,000 hours.

A wasted life. A spiritual danger. Spiritual danger.

So you can understand then why Paul is encouraging Timothy. Timothy was a young man. I don't think he was a teenager.

I think he was a grown man. And he's encouraging him to flee those youthful lusts. You know, they plague every generation.

Every one of us continually will have these things that pop up in this way. And I know this isn't a complete definition, but I need to move on. You see, when it comes to the parable of the sowers, there's the lust of other things that choke out the Word.

Choke out the Word of God. Romans 6 and 12 says, Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body that you should obey it in the lust thereof. The lust thereof.

So with that, we'll go to 1 Corinthians 6. Now whenever we're giving something to flee from, or even in the idea of fleeing, you say, well, Preacher, you're telling us to run, but where do we run to? We have to answer that question. And what we had there in Timothy was a list of things where we're to run. In 1 Timothy 6, we're going to get to that.

You're going to see this, that we follow after. And that word is to pursue or to persecute. And so we're going to run away from something and we're going to run to something else.

Okay, and in that list, there's righteousness. So you're going to run away from these four things, from youthful lust, from fornication, from idolatry, from covetousness. Those are the four we're going to look at.

And we're going to run from them to something else. We just can't run like a chicken with its head cut off. We have to have a goal.

We have to know where we're going. We're going to flee to Christ. Yes, we're going to flee to righteousness.

We're going to flee to godliness. We're going to chase after faith, love, patience, meekness or humbleness. You see the difference.

Now the reason I'm bringing this in here is this, because when we are thinking of these things, oftentimes the way we are as human beings, when boundaries are started to be drawn, people have the idea, okay, I'm going to go to that boundary, then I'll be safe. In other words, if I only game for 15 minutes a day, I'll be safe. So on.

The idea is not to identify the edge of something so that you can ride the edge. Now listen, if you were in the mountains on a one lane road on the side of a mountain, and down the left side or the right side, whatever it might be, doesn't matter, it's one lane. It's 500 feet of sand and slide.

Would you drive on the very edge? Ooh, this is going to be, I'll be okay. I'm just on the edge. Or would you be like most sensible people and you would hug the inside by the bluff? Young people, don't try to define an edge so you can ride the edge because you ride the edge, you'll fall off.

The idea of purity is to go far from the edges you can get. And so in your life as elders or parents, and they set an edge and they set a boundary, they're not doing that so that you can go up to that boundary and hopefully not fall off. And so that you can know where that is and say, okay, that's over there, I need to be over here.

So you're going to flee the edge and you're going to go after the solid. That which will and could and will give way, if I ride that long enough and I will be lost to that danger, you're going to flee that edge, you're going to pursue after the farthest place from that edge in your spiritual life. That's the idea of staying pure.

That applies to all of these, okay? So we've got fleeing youthful lusts and now here in 1 Corinthians 6, verse number 18, verse 17 talks about a joining, but he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit. Alright? And so in fornication, it is a physical joining to someone that they're not married to. And so if we're going to flee that, we're going to emphasize being joined to the Lord.

That's the opposite extreme. One with Christ. Christ in me.

Joined to Him. Okay? That's the goal. Not riding the edge of this sin.

Now we're not going to get explicit about this so we can take a breath of fresh air. And I will say this, that this topic needs to be first and foremost taught in the home. In the home.

Moms and dads, teach your children this. It's where it needs to be taught. Then it needs to be taught when it comes into the assembly, likely at an interview for baptism or for the assembly.

Because what kids are being taught, the reality for those who are going to public school, what they're being taught in school is safe fornication. That's what they're being taught. And when we see someone saved from the outside, they are not going to have any idea what fornication is.

I'll give you an example. There was a woman saved from the outside and she was living with her boyfriend. And she wanted to be baptized.

She didn't have any idea that this was wrong. And so she contacted me and said, I'd like to be baptized. And I said, that's wonderful.

I said, you need to read 1 Corinthians 5. You need to go find a list of sins there that would keep a person out of an assembly. You need to read them and see what you come up with. And I said, there was five things, but there's really six.

Well, 15 minutes later, she called back. She said, there's six things there. So she read it.

But it didn't register with her that what she was doing was sin. Saved by God's grace, yes. Had no clue what she was doing was wrong.

And so then the question was asked, did you read those things? Yes. Well, do you understand what this one is? She said, no. She said, no.

This is a real problem. This is a real danger. Okay, so verse number 18.

Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doth is without the body, but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body. That's interesting.

Most of the sins that we commit are not affecting the body. Drugs affect the body. Alcohol affects the body.

Fornication affects the body. Sticks with you the rest of your life. Affects your brain.

It says flee this. So what does that look like in everyday life? Well, I'll give you three illustrations from a preacher's point of view. He's following up on a call from a seed sower with another brother.

Never go alone. Went to the door. A woman come with just her robe on.

And she said, come in, come in. You flee. You run.

Was hunting with some buddies. We come back to the truck and there was a woman there. Attractive older lady.

She said, what are you guys doing here? All four of us are Christians. We're hunting. Oh, she could tell that.

She knew what we were doing. We're all in camouflage carrying bow and arrow. Right? She said, well, where are you spending the night? Oh, we're going to go back into town.

She said, well, don't do that. Come to my house. My husband's not home.

What do you do? You flee. Was having meetings in a place far, far from here. Staying with a Christian couple.

Both in the assembly. First day I was there. The man was sleeping on the chair.

He was quite a bit older than his wife and she said to me, let's go downtown and get a bite to eat. It was a Cinco de Mayo at the taco stand. Little, you know, the vendors and all this.

And I'm like, what about him? Well, he's sleeping. Let him sleep. This is weird.

So we get down there and we're eating tacos and the mariachi band, the Spanish band is kicking in and she says this. She says, would you like to dance? What do you do? You run. You have to.

You have to. You run from a Christian home. And you flee.

You flee. Now you're dating. And your boyfriend says, why don't you come home? Now I'm assuming if you're dating, he's a saved man.

Or a saved girl. Come home. Mom and dad won't be home for a couple hours.

Why don't you come to my house and hang out? What do you do? You run. You can politely run. You can say no thanks.

That's not the right thing to do. I'm not saying that you jump. You dump him or her.

Dear young people, Paul says flee for an occasion. And if you ride the edge, you will fall. And only by the grace of God are any of us preserved.

Any of us. Paul says to flee for an occasion. We'll go to the next one.

Chapter 10. Verse number 14. Wherefore my dearly beloved, flee from idolatry.

Idolatry. What's that? Well that's the worship of something other than God. Doesn't have to be a little graven image.

Likely won't be a little graven image. Why do we flee idolatry? We learn from the nation of Israel throughout the Old Testament over and over and over again that when they turned from idols, they turned from God to idols. Get that right.

When they turned to idols, the presence and the power of God left them. Because now they're looking to something else to meet their need. They're looking for something else for power.

And now they have turned from the living and the true God. Every idol is the invention of the imagination of a man. So here we are in 2024 and we're supposed to flee idols.

Those things that take our hearts' affections. Those things that we worship and serve. Serving idols.

Paul says to flee that. Flee that. So our idols today are many.

And they're many because in the society that we live, they have gotten rid of God. Now if you take the living and the true God out, all you have left is idols. And every self-serving individual is idolizing themselves.

Every single one of us that lives to please ourself only, we have created ourselves, put ourselves on a pedestal of being God. And my time is gone almost, so I'm going to go very quickly through these. When we have faith or trust or belief in something other than God, it is an idol.

You come to Romans 2, they worshiped and served the creation rather than the Creator. We have that today. We have people that are serving science over God.

True science proves God. Science is not the be-all and end-all. God is.

Science doesn't know everything. But we live in a world that is vastly filling up with people that are idolizing science. Technology.

Artificial intelligence. Where do you run when you have a question about anything? Google. Google is not God.

Google can be a helpful tool. But Google doesn't need to be worshiped and served. Technology in general.

How about the earth? The earth. The climate change. All these things like this, that people are worshiping and serving the creation, the earth, rather than God.

So we worship people. We worship ourselves. The creation.

We worship the earth. The creation. We worship the technology.

The creation of men. We're always worshiping something other than God. And it's insidious.

It is sneaky. But we must flee idolatry. Paul says flee.

And lastly, time has gone. 1 Timothy 6 1 Timothy 6 and verse 11. The context here is the love of money.

There's really lots of things in this chapter to flee from. There's men of perverse disputings and corrupt minds and so on, but I'd like to draw the attention to the end here at verse 10. For the love of money is the root of all evil, which while some have coveted after, they have erred from the faith and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.

So you see the danger and the result. They pierced themselves through. They wounded themselves.

They wounded themselves with many sorrows. The covetousness. The discontentment.

Flee discontentment. Godliness with contentment is great gain. And you know we all have the same idea, don't we? We would like to have a little more.

We would like to have that financial independence. That financial stability. And that isn't necessarily wrong, but when it's our love.

Then we have replaced our love for God and for Christ. And we've replaced it for the love of money which is the root of all evil. It's the love, not the money.

It's the love of the money is the root of all evil. And Paul says, flee that. Flee that.

Contentment. To be satisfied with what has been provided for us. And that doesn't mean that we don't work hard.

That means we don't live to work though. We don't live to work. And so now remember, if we're going to flee these things, if we're going to flee the youthful lust and the fornication and the idolatry and the covetousness, we need to go after something.

Now, the converse is this. If you're going after it already, if you're running after righteousness, the youthful lust will be left in the dust. If you're chasing, if you're persecuting after godliness, nothing will stand in your way for godliness.

Oh, fornication will be left in the dust. Because you're seeking that which is good and your energy and your focus is in the right direction. And if you're following after faith and love and patience, you're following hard after it, the idolatry won't be an issue.

You get the point, right? You get the picture. If here's the danger and you're chasing the other way after something that is good and true and right, you're on the right direction. And if you're chasing after humility and meekness, oh, the contentment will be wonderful, won't it? You'll be going in the right direction.

So these few thoughts of Paul's fleas, that they might stick with us. That we might not have a maimed spiritual life. We might have a full spiritual life for the honor and glory of the One who bought us, purchased us with His own blood.