Wise Fools 1974

Just in case anybody ever gets the idea that Jesus and the apostles were looked upon as heroes in their day by everybody or even by a majority, I'd just like to read a couple verses of Mark 3 20 22 and John 10 19 and 20. Then I'm going to skip back and read something that Paul has to say about himself. The crowd came together again so that they could not even eat.

When his friends heard it, they went out to seize him, for they said, he is beside himself. And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, he is possessed by Beelzebul. And by the prince of demons, he passed southeast.

There was again a division among the Jews because of these words. Many of them said, he has a demon and is mad. Why listen to him? And now the apostle Paul, for I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, like men sentenced to death because we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels and to men.

We are fools for Christ's sake. One of the most liberating things that can happen to us is when we finally get to the place where we are really willing to be regarded for the sake of Jesus Christ as fools. When you're a fool, then you're free.

You no longer have to worry about what people think. And then you can get to the business of doing what needs to be done. And you can say what needs to be said without forever beating around the bush.

If the hotel in which you're staying catches fire, you may look like a fool scrambling down the fire escape in your pajamas and bare feet. But the people see who think even when they see the smoke coming in on the door, that they have to first change into respectable clothes before they make their grand entrance from the fire escape. They're going to die.

Now, once you catch a vision of the kingdom and in the light of that vision, you see the sword of God's judgment hanging over the earth. How can you order your life in any other way? But as a fool coming down the fire escape in his pajamas, once you really see the hand of God at work in this earth, how can you keep yourself from speaking words that to the children of darkness are going to be utterly absurd? He's a fool. He's a madman.

He has a demon. Why listen to him? Nor do we waste our time trying to prove to the world or to our best friends or whoever it may be that we're not mad. Of course we're mad from their point of view.

We've sold out utterly to a Jesus these eyes have never seen. We're directed by a spirit who comes and goes like the wind. We have found our peace in a human blood sacrifice that took place at Jerusalem centuries ago.

And we're nutty enough to believe that this Jesus is the Messiah and that he soon is coming back visibly and in great glory to judge the earth. Now, if we believe this seriously enough to consistently manifest love to our brothers, forgive 70 times 7, give to those in need, we're going to be pitied and loathed by the world. They're not going to come up to us and shake our hand and ask for our autograph.

Now, the truth of the matter is, of course, that a good percentage of people in this gathering right now have never taken that leap to become fools. You want to be a Christian secretly, really. You know, you want to have your faith in such a way that nobody sees what's going on.

You want to hold those words back. You want to pussyfoot around the bold words God has told you to speak and the bold things God has told you to do because the most frightening thing of all in your own mind is that anybody should ever think of you as a fool. See, if you could get on the train of the kingdom secretly, you'd do it.

But to have to climb the steps of that train in the plain sight of the whole jeering world, that's too much. And so there you sit. You keep coming and you keep looking and you keep playing with the idea, but you don't do anything.

Then there are others of us who have made the leap. Oh, we've become fools. But now we think that because we have become fools, this gives us license to be stupid.

And we're not using the minds God gave us. Jesus tells us to beware of false prophets. And so what do we do? We swallow everything they feed us.

Jesus tells us to beware of 11 of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy, and we gobble it up as if it were bread. He tells us to stay awake and spiritually, at least, if not even physically, we lie down promptly and go to sleep. Now, the fact that we are fools for Christ never gives us license to be stupid.

And even though the world may look upon us as fools, praise God's name, something's wrong with us if it doesn't. Nevertheless, in the sight of God, seven days a week, 24 hours a day, we are to be wise as serpents. And what does it mean to be wise as serpents? It means, first of all, that we know who God is.

No man has ever seen God at any time. The Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known. Jesus makes us wise by revealing the Father to us.

In Jesus, we see the Father's glory. He is the brightness of God's glory, the express image of his person. And the closer we come to Jesus, the closer we come to God.

When we walk with Jesus, we walk with God. When we know Jesus, we know God. When Jesus lives in us, God lives in us.

And when God lives in us, how can we be anything but wise? To be wise as serpents means, however, not only that we know God, but that we also know who we are. As Harold read this morning, if a man thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself. He's the worst of fools.

When a man begins to realize that he is nothing, then he begins to get some wisdom. And what are we? We are exactly what Jesus says we are. We are lambs in the midst of wolves.

We are not big shots. We are not experts. We are not adepts.

We are not yet the manifested sons of God. And don't ever let anybody come around with this doctrine that the manifested sons of God are already here and that you're one of them. Until Jesus comes back in glory, we are lambs surrounded by wolves who have the power to devour us at any point except for the presence of a living God with us.

And when we forget this, and we start trying to push the wolves around as if we had strength of our own, we begin to get torn and mangled. We begin to play games with the wolves as very often believers in Jesus think they can do. They're going to make deals with the world.

They're going to start playing the world's game and getting somewhere, financially or other ways. It won't be long before we feel their teeth. May God give us the wisdom to see until the Lord comes back that we are nothing else but little lambs surrounded by wolves.

To be wise as serpents means not only that we know who God is and who we are, but who the enemy is. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the heavenly spiritual hosts of wickedness in heavenly places, so that that man or that race which you still regard as your enemy is not your enemy. And you are clinging to stupidity.

You are insisting on being a fool in the wrong sense by regarding that person or that race of men as your enemy. Nor is your enemy the establishment or the communist party, as if to be a Christian means that's all you do now. You're going to fight communism.

Or the male sex. Or women. Or some other church.

Your enemy, my friend and mine, is Satan, the father of lies. And the entire kingdom of the enemy is based on the lie. And if Satan can get you to believe in or to repeat or to speak or to live a lie, he has brought you under his authority.

And what he does always is paint an illusion, you know, build a great big illusion around the path that he wants to lure you down. And he deceives you about yourself. And then he begins to whisper lies in your heart about God and about your wife or your husband or your brother or your sister.

And when we get to the judgment seat, we will not be able to say, but God, I was deceived. I didn't know. We will rather have to admit, confess before God that time and time and time again, we followed lies knowing very well that they were lies.

Satan knows just what lies we like. And those are the lies he feeds us. And we swallow them and we pretend we don't know.

But we do know those of us who are like to be suspicious, love to hear lies that will just arouse that. But we like a juicy story about somebody else's problems. We grab hold of those to be wise as serpents also means that we are to be alert.

See that you walk circumspectly, carefully, not as unwise, but as wise, making the most of the time because the days are evil. And many of us seem to think that if we're pious, then we can be stupid. It's all right.

As long as we say our hearts are right, then it's okay for us to let our minds gather mold. And so we don't think or watch or pray. We just stumble from one stupid mistake to another.

King Saul's problem was not that he was an evil man, but that he was a stupid man. He did not use the mind God gave him. He forever allowed his mind to slide over things that needed to have attention.

And always at the last minute, he would pull himself together and act compulsively and do a stupid thing and blame everybody else. And so finally, he had to be removed as king. To be wise as serpents means that we are to be aggressive.

And there are all kinds of, you know, messages going around that would tell you the other way. But listen to what Paul says, what is in Philippians 3, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead. I press toward the goal for the prize of the upper calling of God in Christ Jesus.

What else is this but to be aggressive? Listen, the followers of Jesus who let themselves become slobs are not fools for Christ. They're fools for Satan. And they're dropping by the wayside all over the city.

Jesus tells us very clearly that we are to be aggressive in our prayers. The guy going next door for bread at midnight, the woman pestering the unjust judge, the example of Jacob wrestling with the angel of the Lord, the Syrophoenician woman. Again and again, Jesus tells us that we are to pray and not to faint, to be aggressive, to keep pushing.

He tells us that we are to be aggressive in our pursuit of God's will. The kingdom of God is like a treasure hidden in a field which a man found and covered up, and then he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. What is that but being aggressive? And we have to be aggressive in the search for the lost.

You know, it's not a matter of saying, well, the door's open, let him come if they want to. The woman turned her house upside down looking for the lost coin. The shepherd went all over the place trying to find that little lost sheep.

And we have to do the same. And we are to be aggressive in the proclamation of his name. If we're not aggressive, then we're ashamed of him, and he's going to be ashamed of us.

To be wise in service means that we are to be single-minded, that heart, soul, strength, and mind are concentrated on loving God and doing his will. Now, what many of us have done is to substitute the one-track mind for the single mind, and that's a very different thing. You know, we get on a spiritual hobby, and we make that everything.

And that's our excuse. Over here's a saint who has found a hobby in demons. He's boiled everything down to demons.

All you have to do is cast out the demons. Praise the Lord, brother, and before that, he's talking about demons. After that, you know, no other conversation.

And every place he goes, he decides, that's the problem. Oh, you know, this fellow's, you know, uh, scratching himself too much, that must be a demon. And this fellow's blinking his eyes, he's got a demon.

Everybody's got a demon. And by the way, the people who have the one-track mind about demons never make spiritual advisors, because very often, when I start giving demons so much attention, this is a sign that I'm giving them more glory than Jesus. And pretty soon, I have a cloud of demons right over my head.

And at the first opportunity, they're going to sink right down into my heart. Think about that. And then there is the one-track mind fellow over here who, who, everything is the New Testament church.

You know, it's the New, this can't be the New Testament church. You've got windows, stained glass windows. They never had stained glass windows in the New Testament church.

He had a pipe organ. They never had that. This can't be the place.

I'm going to look someplace else, and we keep looking for the New Testament church, and you know where we end up in our own church. You know, we're the New Testament church and nobody else. It's wonderful what we grab hold of.

Here's somebody whose one-track mind has latched on to praise. He's read some books about praise. If you praise God, the doors will open, everything will be okay.

The guy's in prison. Just tell him to praise God. Don't go visit him.

Just write him a letter and tell him to praise God. This is, this man over here is hungry. They haven't had food for three days in their house.

Tell him to praise God. It'll be all right. Never mind that you got food in your cupboard.

You know, well, if he praises God, his decrees will be free. It's a pack, pretty sumptuous. Now, praise God.

That's all you have to do. Praise God. See, now, all these things are things that believers are to do, but never with a one-track mind.

And you can latch on to any number of things and do the same thing with it. Legitimate, good, holy things. But now that's the answer.

That's everything. When Jesus is the center, and when I'm single-mindedly trying to follow him, casting out demons, praising God, the New Testament church, building up the body, call it what you like, intercession, all these things will find their right place. But Jesus will be the center, not my little hobby.

And finally, to be wise as serpents means that there can be no compromise. Behold, I send you forth as lambs in the midst of wolves. Be wise as serpents and innocent as dogs.

And my friends, when we lose our innocence, we lose our power, if it ever was the power of God. All we have to do is open the door just a little crack, and in comes Satan. We like to tell ourselves, and we don't even form the words, but this is what we seem to think very often, that if I just allow a little bit of evil, I indulge just a little bit in this direction or that, that's okay, because there's so much good in me, it'll just purify the evil.

But that's not what happens. When you allow a little bit of evil to come in, it always corrupts the good. Don't you know, Sis.

Paul, that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Purge out the old leaven. Get rid of it. We have renounced these disgraceful, underhanded ways and refused to practice cunning or tamper with God's words, Sis.

Paul, but by open statement of truth, we commend ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God. So to those in this gathering right now who are still afraid to be fools for Christ, the call is take belief and become a fool. Join the fellowship of the rejects and praise God while you do it.

And for those of us who have been foolish fools, and we are many, the call is that we are to be wise as servants. We need to understand, and it's better for us to get it clear right now, that we won't last two weeks really as servants of God if we aren't walking in the wisdom of God. The evil one will have us tied up in knots before we know it.

And so God gives us his spirit, and surely is pouring out his spirit upon us this day afresh, not only so that his love should be shed abroad in our hearts, and not only so that we have the power to heal the sick and cast out demons, but also that we might have that wisdom without which we shall never survive. God help us to walk in that wisdom this day. Let's pray.

Lord God, first of all, we're praying for any man or woman or whoever who is hearing the call to get off the high fence of pride and to be a fool for Jesus Christ. We're asking that your power will come to rest upon anybody who's ready now to come through the door and enter the kingdom and lay down his or her life at the feet of Jesus. And we pray that you will take away from that person all self-consciousness, and that you will help that person to do whatever he or she needs to do, whatever, if it should be that they should come down in front of here and kneel at this altar give them the boldness to do that, but not to leave here until they have made that commitment that they need to make and made it without shame, without self-consciousness, and without fear.

We thank you, Lord. We just pray that you'll be moving on all our hearts. Take away from us, oh God, this self-consciousness and self-centeredness that has bound us up and made us false.

Give us the strength right now to take off our masks and be what we really are, without fear. And Father, we also pray for those who have made that leap and have become fools, that we might turn away from the foolish, stupid, unthinking, self-centered, thoughtless, undisciplined things that we've done, and come back and walk in the footsteps of Jesus, who has always been, and always will be, Heavenly Father, your wisdom incarnate.