Are you a spiritual thermostat or thermometer???
they were seeking them to bring them (Paul and Silas) to the populace, and not having found them, they drew Jason and certain brethren unto the city rulers, calling aloud—‘These, having put the world in commotion, are also here present, whom Jason hath received; and these all do contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying another to be king—Jesus.’ Acts 17
Spiritual Thermostat / Thermometer
Thermostat = sets the temperature of the room
Thermometer = reflects and reiterates room temperature
Rev 19:10 (knox translation) it is the truth concerning Jesus which inspires all prophecy
1 Peter 4:11 if anyone speaks, let him speaks as the oracles of God
The truth concerning Jesus is THE Spirit, THE motivation, THE reason, THE purpose, and THE impetus behind everything God has ever revealed, or will reveal……that is what the Bible says….
If the “thing” we hear, see, or experience, does not bring us into a deeper, more experiential knowing of Jesus…if it does not bring Him more clearly into focus….if it does not lead us to Him or draw people to Him as all-in-all….if it does not bring Him into a greater preeminence…then it is not Spirit-breathed and it is false. See organized religion, etc
And most of the time if it is not leading us to Christ then it is distracting us from Christ (He said come, not go…with Me, or against Me)
And that’s why those that know the Truth cannot be silent (just look to the biblical examples of Paul rebuking the Jews/Peter…. Paul casting out the woman with the spirit of divination…)
We cannot, knowing the Truth, sit back and say “poor people, they aren’t pointing people to Christ, but otherwise they are rather harmless….” Well, Jesus said if you are not gathering with Him then you are separating/scattering from Him…and based on that if you are not pointing people to Christ then you are distracting them from Christ and there is nothing harmless about that, and that must be confronted, that must be set in order…..
Read in Galatians 2 regarding Peter, Barnabas, and all the other Jewish believers in Antioch….. they withdrew from the gentile believers….because they were afraid of what the visitors from Jerusalem would think…all of them, even Barnabas, followed Peter on this….it was in the greatest vain of racism, cliqueism, etc that this occurred which is not of Christ. It would be no different than “white” believers having nothing to do with “black” believers, or “black” from “Asian”, etc, etc. It isn’t a pretty sight, but the Bible records it for us…and it is no different than what we see today in the professing body of Christ and all of its fleshly sects and divisions.
But one man, Paul, 1 man with a heart and earnestness fully set upon Christ, out of that whole assembly there in Antioch….1 man stood up and confronted them…not in private, but in public…. (Jesus did the same with the Pharisees whom we know were not of the Spirit of Christ)
Paul said “when I saw that they were not living according to the Truth of the Gospel I said to Peter in front of them all….”
God used 1 man to make a difference……God used 1 man to confront their hypocrisy…God used 1 man to save the church/assembly from completely falling apart from this issue…God used 1 man to preserve the integrity and purity of the gospel….
Now what if Paul had seen all of this going on and just sat back and thought…..”well some of those actually walked with Jesus….they’ve been an apostle longer than I have, who am I to confront him….no one else is saying anything, so I guess I’ll just go along with it too…oh it bothers me and troubles me but what can I do about it….I just know I’m supposed to be with this group of people and if I confront them and their hypocrisy they’ll certainly be offended…I’m just going to love them and be a light and let God show them the truth because I can’t say anything anyway because God has to show them…it’s just where they are right now…
That is the garbage and junk spouted out by religion everyday….it’s a cop out…its laziness….it is nothing more than the fear of man…did you ever stop to consider that perhaps God does want to show them and that God wants to tell them and God wants to use you to do it? Let me ask…did God or Jesus passively ever just “love somebody where they are”…. That is such a trite religious expression. Love demands action…agapao is not passive by definition… God did not look on a lost world and deem that He just needs to love them where they are….no, love reaches out and says that it must love you unto the place where you are called to be (conformed unto the image of Christ Romans 8:29) …. And that’s why we don’t just love people where they are, we speak the truth in love also…for God so loved the world that He GAVE….the Son of Man came not just to save the lost but To SEEK and To Save the lost….He’s searching them out…He’s not just loving them where they are He is loving them into where He wants them to be…. Where they are is lost
Paul says that the love of God compels us…. It drives us to take action…
James said that if you see someone hungry and naked and all you do is say “God bless you” you are just spiritualizing their problem and if you don’t do something practical to meet their needs then what good is it?? He then says how can the love of God be in the heart of a person like that? And why does He ask that question…because the Bible shows us that God’s love called forth a response from Him…there is a practical expression of the spiritual truth…and without the practical expression, the spiritual truth isn’t truth at all, its nothing but a theory…remember when the lawyer came to Jesus and want a legal theorization and what it means to love your neighbor, who is my neighbor exactly and what is the least I can do and still obey the letter of the law…Jesus tells him a story…the story we know as “the good Samaritan” …. All the Jews passed by the helpless man, but it was the Samaritan, one who was despised by the jews that gave aide. He didn’t just “pray a prayer for him” or “pray to God if he should do something for this man” or ask God for a leading or sign, etc… Nope he took him to an inn, nurses his wounds, and pays his bills… that’s what loving your neighbor is… not this ethereal, fuzzy, foggy spiritual notion or sentimentality…but a real practical expression…
Jesus didn’t just teach, etc…He demonstrate and “dwelt among us”, and that is the real Jesus and The Life
The truth concerning Jesus, being the Truth OF Jesus, shatters all of our notions and misconceptions about God, etc. It is intended to confront our hypocrisy, pretense, and playacting…. And then show us THE TRUTH, Himself. And if you haven’t had that kind of an interaction with God, then I’m not sure you’ve truly met Him yet…
There are all the things that exist ABOUT Jesus….and then there IS Jesus Himself. It is the testimony of Jesus, the Truth concerning Jesus, the revelation of Christ as He in fact is…not what we think He is, not what we want Him to be, not what we except Him to be, and certainly not what organized religion tells us He is…
Read the gospels accounts…here is this religious expectation of what God is like, what the kingdom of God is like, what Jesus is supposed to do…. And Jesus confronts them, confounds them, confuses them, and upsets them at every turn… He is so utterly different from what we expect…
How many times have we crucified the real Jesus and made this false image of Him and worshipped that instead?? That in its simplest form, is religion, and organized religion of modern “church” to be exact. That is in fact what the catholic church is founded upon, which in turn is what all the “protestant” adhere too since they are merely the children of their mother, jezebel.
But we see from scriptures that maintaining the testimony of Jesus, declaring the Truth concerning Jesus, WILL get you persecuted…it WILL get you killed…it will attract the attention of the adversary…and it will get you noticed by people and things that you’d rather not be noticed by…
To have the revelation of Jesus, to know Him and be known of Him…is to find yourself at war with a million other voices, each proclaiming something about Jesus that really isn’t the truth…and that sets the stage for conflict (the Book of Revelation shows us the spiritual side of this conflict)
You see…
The Truth is a thermostat – it changes everything (see Acts 17:6)
Religion is a thermometer and only echoes and molds
So, once again, I ask you: are you a “thermometer” or a “thermostat”??
Ekklesia Koinonia "Fellowship of the Called-out ones" 