Six Roadsigns for Christian Liberty

Welcome to the Whole Council Podcast. I'm John Snyder and you'll notice that we are definitely not in our normal studio. There is a particular reason for this. I would like to use this strange setup as an object lesson as we work through the next couple of weeks and looking at particular questions.

I want to look at some questions that the Christian has as we grow as believers and we have our Bible in our hands but there are areas of the Christian life where sometimes though the map is perfect we are very imperfect map readers and we're living in a very imperfect world with an enemy that constantly barrages us with half-truths and even Christians around us are imperfect followers.

So what do we do in those areas where as we're growing as Christians and there's you know those birth pains we're not exactly sure what to do. Where do I put my next step? What would honor the Lord and why do I feel like this is the right choice for me but my good friend who also is an earnest Christian completely disagrees.

What do you do in times like that? So here I am this is the way I normally dress and this is the way my study always looks unless someone comes and cleans it up. So I want to talk about following the Lord Jesus Christ in the messiness of everyday life.

I mentioned doing two podcasts like this. Today we're going to look at a general question and the answer will be given in six basic principles. We can consider this as a question that involves all the journey of the Christian life and so our six principles might be thought of as road signs all along the path that help keep us in a way that honors our Lord.

Next week we'll look at some specific questions that Christians have sent over the years that I think are common to all of us and we'll look at the answers to those. So let's get to our question today and this question is a question that's been sent in different ways from different people but not long ago a believer sent me this question and I'm going to paraphrase it in my own words.

How does a Christian know what to do in those areas of life where there seems to be some freedom of conscience? What we might consider neutral areas or we might call gray areas. I don't think gray areas is the best word and certainly that's a that's an idea that's been abused but you you know what I mean.

These are areas where genuine believers might have different opinions concerning. These are areas that the older Christian writers, so think Puritans through Spurgeon, some of our favorite writers seem to be very dogmatic and clear about these ethical choices but modern Reformed men that we respect have different opinions.

When we think about our day and we consider the movement in the last 20 years, John Piper, Sproul, MacArthur, where there's been a movement toward perhaps a more careful dealing with theological topics, a more God-centered approach which I think has been wonderful.

There is sometimes though we see in the movement a reaction, a moral reaction against what might be considered an unbiblical legalism that had gone you know for decades prior to this. So you know a list of do's and don'ts.

If you're a Christian you never do this and you always do this and it may not necessarily be biblical but more cultural and now the Reformed movement seems to have swung so far from the legalism of the earlier days that now we wonder have we swung too far.

So how do we know? Was Spurgeon right about theaters? Was J .C. Ryle? What about Whitfield and Wesley and those men? Were they right or are we right? Well I want us to look at some different ways that we can answer this question and before I look at the six road signs let me just say this.

I think that this is a very common question and it is the question of a person often who really loves the Lord but it's not the kind of question you always ask in church. So you come together for a small group study you know for an adult study or if you're younger you know you're with a college age group.

I mean you just don't find people raising their hand right in the middle of a sermon and saying I'm sorry pastor I don't even know what to do here and I don't know why Joe over there feels free to act that way because that would really bother me.

So we don't ask these questions. When you don't ask questions about the Christian life one of the things I have found that the enemy does is he often whispers to us that this is a unique question because you are unique.

Now you could be unique in the sense that you are uniquely righteous, uniquely holy, uniquely serious about the Lord's honor and everyone around you who doesn't seem to be worried about this question well it's because they're compromised and that would be a really dangerous assumption.

That's the Pharisee in all of us. But there is another implication that maybe I'm unique because I'm not a normal Christian. It's not that I'm a great Christian maybe I'm a terrible Christian but I'm not normal and if you believe that you are asking questions that no one else asks and you're facing struggles that no one else faces and you believe that that's because you are unique here's the lie.

The Bible works for every other type of believer but not for you and if you are unique or strange or not normal then maybe the Bible doesn't actually answer your question and it's not the Bible's fault.

It's your fault. You're just in a weird category. I don't know any Christian who hasn't at some time felt this that maybe it doesn't really work for people like me. I'm an odd kind of Christian. Now those are both lies.

Many Christians ask these and every Christian faces similar things so don't be afraid to ask the question in the right way. Another thing I want to say is that there are questions regarding the Christian life and especially in this area of how do I know what's right and wrong when there's a disagreement among other believers, when the old writers and the new writers may not agree, when I look at the Bible and I'm not sure how to apply it.

With questions like these I find that oftentimes the real value of getting the answer is found in the process or the journey that God takes you on and at the end of this journey you do find the answer but it's the things that you really wrestle with in your own heart, your own attitudes, and it's the things that God teaches you about himself and about his Word as you're in the process of coming to your answer.

The journey carries as much value as the answer. How you reach the answer is almost as important as the answer itself. Now I'm not saying that God doesn't care what we choose, option A or B, because it's a gray area.

I actually think that God doesn't have gray areas. We do. But I am saying that if I had the wisdom to just shoot an email to people who sent these kinds of questions and I could give them the perfect answer, which I don't have that wisdom, would it be good?

And I feel that the answer is that would be second best. What's best is to give us principles by which we can stay on the path of obedience and faith and love and God himself will lead us to the answer.

So the journey is really a large part of the value in the answer. Well let me give you six road signs, all right, very quickly. Number one, it's always good to make sure that when you are framing your question that you are asking the right question.

Most of the time I find that when I come up with wrong answers in the Christian life, whether they're doctrinal or ethical, my wrong answer can be traced back to me asking the wrong question. So sometimes we come to a passage and we ask the wrong question.

What I mean by that is it's not the question the passage is answering at all and we end up having to do violence to the passage. We have to kind of bend the passage to fit my question and then we come up with an answer and it's not right.

So asking the right question right at the beginning I find to be one of the most helpful road signs to keep me from going off the path of obedience. So let's take this particular question. What do I do in neutral, gray, unclear areas when I'm trying to do what honors the Lord but I just don't know what to do because good Christians around me are disagreed.

And in these areas of maybe areas of conscience where people have freedom, I'm not sure what that is. Is my freedom self-indulgence? Is my careful obedience legalism? And how do I know the difference?

Well that's a good question but I don't think it's the best question. Let me give you a much better question and if we can start with the best question it really clears up about 90 of the fog. And I would say that the better question is this.

How can you walk as close to the Lord Jesus Christ with the open Bible in your hand, the Spirit of Christ in the soul, and the face not toward the rules, toward the King? How can you follow the commands of Scripture with your focus on the King?

How can you walk as close to Jesus Christ as a saved sinner can walk in this life? That's a much better question. I find that clears up quite a few things. It doesn't answer every question but when I'm looking around at other people and I'm asking, well is this right or is this right?

Am I allowed to do this or am I not allowed to do this? So-and-so says this but this man says something different. I find if I just look at the King and ask him this, how close can I get to you today?

How close can I stick to you today? That's a better question. So that's our first road sign. Ask the right question. Wrong questions make it very difficult. Second, ask the right question from the right motive.

If you think about the path that the Scripture lays ethically at our feet, right and wrong, don't go too far this way, don't go too far this way. If you think about following Jesus as not just following a person but following the path he followed, the moral law, obeying God, loving the Father with all of his heart and mind and soul and strength and loving other people as he loves himself, which he did perfectly.

If you think of that path and you consider it as a path that leads to a destination, that's good because you have a good goal, a good motive, a good aim. The aim in our obedience is to express our gratitude and love to the King.

So John chapter 14 verse 15, you remember that Christ tells the disciples before he leaves them, if you love me you will keep my commandments. So here's the goal of obedience, the expression of love, and that is also the source of our obedience.

Faith, working by love. So do you view the commands of the Bible as a path on which you will enjoy the nearness of your Lord and the goal is the ultimate glorification of Jesus of Nazareth? Or do you view the commands of Scripture and the choices of right and wrong as a treadmill?

Now here's what I mean. A treadmill, walking on a treadmill and walking on a path, the actions, the motions of your body and the exertion that's required may be very similar, but the outcome is very different and so the purpose for walking on each of these is very different.

I walk on a path generally to arrive at a destination. I walk on a treadmill and I have no destination in mind except this. I want John to be a better John. I want John to be a more fit John. I would like to be a slimmer John.

When we come to the Scripture, we can take the words of Christ, we can take the moral law, we can take, you know, the words of the epistles where all the realities of Christ are brought down into baby church settings in the midst of a multicultural world that hates Christ.

We can take all of those steps and we can turn them into a treadmill. I'm going to follow these carefully because I'm going to become a more fit, more admirable me. I'm going to use God to make a better me.

Or you can say this is a path that leads to something much greater than me getting in shape. It leads to Christ's pleasure, to God's pleasure. It leads to God's glory. So why are you even asking the question?

Are you asking it for the right reason? That's our second signpost. Now let me give you the third. Surround yourself with the best writings of the past believers as you walk this path. I think you could even say this.

If you choose the best writings of the old writers, I find by constant exposure to what they say, it's as if those people themselves become companions on the trip. Whenever I give books to people in the church, I often sign it saying something like this, I pray that this book would be a lifelong friend to you on the journey because that's what I think of the books.

All of this mess on my floor, this is actually the most recent delivery from my house back here. So I take books little by little back to my house and then you know eventually there's no room for them in my study at the house and so I have to pack them up and they come in here and they lay here for a long time until I get the energy to put them up.

These books are my friends. Many of these books I've read many times. I remember when I was studying for a PhD, I had to read everything that George Whitefield wrote or preached. And I also read just about everything I could find that other people wrote about Whitefield in his generation.

Now this took about six weeks of constant reading. So eight hours a day, maybe five, six days a week, only reading on Whitefield. At the end of six weeks, I felt like George Whitefield was my closest friend and that every time I went to bed at night beside my wife, George Whitefield was there too.

And every time I woke up, George Whitefield was there. And things that George Whitefield said, just they kind of followed me. They haunted me. They were my companions. His sayings as I lived a Christian life, I found it so beneficial.

So I am glad that through old books, Hudson Taylor, Martin Lloyd-Jones, J .C. Ryle, Robert Murray McShane, Amy Carmichael, Tozer, on and on. These can become my companions. I also have tried to read my favorite old authors, read a biography about them.

In fact, I've tried to read every biography I can about a few of them. So take McShane. I remember there was a stretch in my life where I read every biography I could find on Robert Murray McShane. And I found about four or five biographies.

And they weren't all equally valuable, but they all gave you a different look. And I felt like McShane was a friend that walked alongside me all day long. It is an immense benefit to the believer to go back to the old writers and be so acquainted with them that they become your companions.

That way, as we're walking the Christian life, when there are parts of the road that we seem to struggle to know which is the best choice, you have some of the greatest Christians from the past there with you, reminding you of their example.

Now why do I say old writers? Are old writers all good and new writers all bad? Certainly not. But in my experience, the older writers from, say, the Puritans through Lloyd-Jones have tended to be more beneficial to me personally.

I've asked myself why. I think there are a couple of questions. One is, some eras of Christian history are, you know, there are times where the Christians passed through really difficult seasons, great suffering, and the things that they wrote, they're weighty.

There's no fluff. There's no, you know, in each chapter, they're not quoting, you know, classic rock lyrics so as to be, you know, relevant. They just go right to the things that I need if I'm going to follow Christ.

Spurgeon said he loved to read the writers whose books smelled like the prison. In other words, Christians who were persecuted and were able to write things about Christ from that situation that they may not have been able to write otherwise.

Think of Bunyan, Rutherford's Letters. So different eras of Christian history have different strengths, and our day has strengths, but it's not always in depth. Another reason, I think, is that the old writers that we can buy today that, you know, Reformation Heritage Books and Banner of Truth and other companies have reproduced for us, these books have been sifted through three, four hundred years, two hundred years, and we have only what has survived the best of their best writings.

Time has a way of sifting out the good stuff and leaving you only with the best, and so that means not everything that J .C. Ryle said was best, but what was best has been republished. What has helped Christians through the centuries has been guarded and, you know, and given to the next generation.

So old writers books, it's not that old writers are better, it's that we only have the best of the old writers, and there are a lot of good books that are going out today, and they are good, but in 400 years most of them will be forgotten, perhaps, and if the Lord tarries, just their best stuff will be given.

For example, Charles Wesley's hymns. I think Charles Wesley was a great hymn writer, even though I don't agree with everything Wesley thought theologically, but do you know that we don't have all of Charles Wesley's hymns in our hymnals?

Wesley wrote some hymnals during a time of Arminian versus Calvinistic debate in the Great Awakening over there, the Evangelical Revival. He wrote a lot of hymns just to attack George Whitefield and the Calvinistic wing of the Revival, and these are not the hymns that we've kept.

They're not his best. Those hymns which have stated the universal truths of the Christian life in such beautiful and penetrating ways, those have remained. Not all of Wesley's hymns were great. The ones we have today are his better ones.

So read the old writers, let them be companions. That's the third sign on the road. Let me give you a fourth. When there are questions of Christian ethics and you don't know which option is the right option, and you're searching the Scripture and praying, make this your aim to choose the highest always and only.

Don't make it your aim to choose the easiest. Don't look for a compromise. It may be that there are times in the Christian life because of your immaturity or because of the struggles of your heart that it's not very clear to you what to do next, and you're asking the Lord and you're opening the Bible, but you're still not clear.

If you can bring your heart to desire definitely the best and the highest path for the King's honor, it will be a great step forward in understanding what God wants you to do. You may still make mistakes.

You may still make a choice that later you look back and realize that in your ignorance you didn't know that wasn't the right choice, but I find that to be rare. I find that the Lord will give us the grace to know the best path to take if we want to choose the highest path for His honor.

Amy Carmichael early on in her missionary career was influenced by a missionary that she never met, but she had read about, and it was a man, it was a British missionary in the same region of India. His name was Ragland.

Strange name. She eventually wrote a biography about him. She went and saw his grave one day with some other missionaries, and she was thinking about his life, and there was another man with her, Walker, and Walker had known Ragland, and Walker had influenced Amy Carmichael.

He was kind of the linchpin between them. Later when Walker left the mission field, and she was by herself, she was asked about his character, and she said this about Walker. She said, he chose the highest always, only.

What a statement. Regardless of my stumbling efforts, my heart is set to choose the highest ethical choice for Christ. So it's not always easy to know what it is, but if you can set your heart on that, then that's a great benefit.

Let me give you a fifth road sign. In areas of recreation, and the Christian needs recreation, make sure that you're very careful here. This is often where I find myself making excuses for self-indulgence, and for things that don't help.

So let's think about recreation. The old writers, the Puritan said that the bow cannot always remain strong. So think of a bow and arrow. If you have a bow, if you shoot bow, you know that when you're done with it, the old style of bows, you would always unstring it.

The wood isn't meant to remain under tension all the time, so you have to unstring the bow. The Christian has to unstring at times. We need physical, and spiritual, and mental refreshment. We can't always be under the labor and strain of service.

We never need a break from God, but sometimes we need a break from the labor. Let me give you two guiding principles from history. The first is one I've mentioned before. Susanna Wesley, mother of John Wesley, when she sent him off to college, John Wesley had grown up in a morally serious home.

He gets to Oxford University, and he's quite shocked that everybody who claims to be a Christian there is living pretty loose compared to how he lived back home. Everybody's going and playing cards late at night.

They're going to dances, and balls, and the theater, and all of these were, you know, in Wesley's upbringing, these were seen as taboo. So he writes a letter home to his mom, and he asks her, what am I supposed to think about this?

Are these people all wrong, or are we wrong? She gave him a great principle. She said this, whatever dims Christ's glory to you, to you that thing is a sin. So we're not asking, can I go watch a movie or not?

Can a Christian play cards or not? The question is this, when you go and do that, does it cast a cloud between you and your Lord where His beauty is lessened? The captivating quality of Christ upon your heart is lessened.

The grip is loosened. Susanna Wesley's advice was good. If it dims Christ's beauty to you, if you lose sight of His everythingness, don't do it. Find some other recreation. I'll give you another. Amy Carmichael in India, their labor, Amy and the ladies that worked with her, was particularly strenuous.

They rescued young girls from temple prostitution. The mothers couldn't support the girl. They would hand the infant over to the Hindu temples, and they would be trained up as prostitutes. When you read Amy's books, she uses very English restrained language, but that's what was happening.

The Indian government denied that it existed, but it was everywhere. Working with little children that you knew were being taken into that life, trying to get them out of that life, pleading with mothers on the way to the temple that they didn't have to hand that little girl over to the temple authorities that Amy Carmichael and the missionaries would raise the child, trying to help them understand how wicked that would be.

And it doesn't please their God. Their God is an idol. When Amy Carmichael lived her entire adult life doing that, she recognized that recreation was often required. You needed relief from the strain and the sorrow.

So she said this, when you choose recreation, make sure that it's not something that when you do it, and you're finished, that at the end of the time of recreation, you feel you have taken a few steps back from Christ.

You feel that there is less power in your Christian life. You know what I mean? Where, you know, it's the kind of thing that at the end of that recreation, if someone said to you, well before we go home, would you meet us in prayer, would you feel awkward?

But I've taken a few steps back. I'm not where I was before this event, before I watched that TV show with you, before we laughed about those things, and so I don't feel that I could really pray right now.

Any form of recreation that dims Christ's beauty to you, any form of recreation that causes you to feel that you've stepped back, for you, those are to be avoided. That's the fifth sign. Let me give you a last one.

Don't go against your conscience in these maybe gray areas or areas where people disagree. Even if Christians you admire feel free to do something or not to do it, don't you follow their pattern if your conscience is wounded by following their pattern.

Be willing to walk alone. It may be that the Lord has a let another brother or sister, maybe they're at a place in their Christian life where they can do certain things that for you, where you're at in the Christian life, it would not be beneficial, but for them it is.

I mean it's hard to think of all those areas, but if you realize that you owe God, you owe your King your obedience, and it doesn't matter what people are doing around you. You walk as close to Christ as you know how to walk with the light you've been given, and do not do not go against your conscience.

But now let me add that this road sign has a little, you know, we would just put a little subtitle under this road sign, a small little print, and that is be willing to walk alone in following Christ in areas where other friends have different opinions than you, as long as you're doing what you're doing from the things we've talked about, right motives, open Bible, but never walk aloof.

It is hard not to follow the pattern of a Christian you admire. They feel free to do these things, you would like to do these things, but your conscience is bothered, and you've prayed, and you've sought the scripture, and your conscience is still bothered.

Do not follow them. Do not wound the conscience and go along with your buddy. That's not easy, but I find it to be much harder that when you do walk alone in certain areas, and people in your family, people in your church aren't on the same path that you're on right now, and the attitude is right, do not walk aloof.

Do not be arrogant. Let me give you a good test for this, simple test. The Pharisees versus the true Christian, the cheerful Christian. The Pharisee keeps the rules outwardly very strictly, and other people don't, and the Pharisee is always a bitter person, because think of it, I am doing all these rules, and I am giving up everything that is fun for Jesus, so that I can be a good person, and I can you know end up in the right place at the end of life.

A very self-centered approach to obedience, loving the world, but not letting yourself do the things the world does, so that you can earn God's forgiveness. It's the Pharisee. Now when the Pharisee sacrifices all this fun, and other people who go to church with him seem to enjoy those things with a clear conscience, the Pharisee is bitter.

Why do you get to have fun, and I don't get to have fun? Well it must be because I'm so holy, and they are aloof. Think about the true Christian. You come to decisions where other believers don't agree with you, and you make a decision that maybe seems more strict, but that's the only decision you can come to with a clear conscience, and an open Bible, and prayer.

You've come to it for the right motives, love of Christ, not to make you a better person. In following that path, you enjoy a sweet nearness with your King. John 14 verse 21, where Christ says, and again in verse 23, it says it in a parallel way, if you love me, you will keep my word, or he who keeps my word is the one that loves me, and my father will love him, and I will love him.

My father will make his abode in him. You know, we will dwell with him. The picture of intimacy. The Christian who walks in a sweet surrender to the King, in harmony with the words of his King, from a heart of love to the King, enjoys the intimate time with the King, enjoys the presence of the King.

For the Christian, that's the great treasure. So happy walking in obedience with God in areas where maybe other Christians aren't being so careful. You're not bitter when you look at them. You're happy.

You are the cheerful one, the happy one, and you want other Christians to maybe be more careful in these areas, but you don't come at them with the Pharisees' aloofness. You walk separate from them at times, but with love for them, and an earnest desire that they would know the happiness that you're knowing.

Six road signs to help us when we're walking through the path of the Christian life, and we're growing as a Christian, and we're wrestling with these questions over and over in different circumstances, and things look a bit foggy.

How do we know, how can we stay on the path? These six signs can help us. Well, we'll be back next week, and we'll look at some specific questions.