Diabolical - Agenda #2 - Maintain the Status Quo, Part 1

Did you ever see the movie Fiddler on the Roof? One of the most popular songs in that movie is called Tradition. There's something about tradition that makes us feel secure and connected and grounded. But there's a dark side to tradition as well. Even good traditions of our faith. A dark side that is so powerful that it can destroy the very things it's meant to preserve.

So how do you know if a tradition has gone dark? Stick around. Welcome to this Edition of Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. The mission of these daily programs is to intentionally disciple Christians through the Bible teaching of Chip Ingram. I'm Dave Drouin, and we're in the middle of our series, Diabolical, Satan's Agenda for Planet Earth, Including You. As Chip's been sharing, we have an enemy who will use anything and everything to destroy us. And in this program, we'll learn about another true tactic Satan uses. As a quick reminder, if you miss a portion of this program, let me encourage you to download the Chip Ingram app.

It's a great way to catch up any time. Now here's Chip with his message, Maintain the Status Quo from Acts Chapter 7. This is a series, if you're new, not about quote spiritual warfare or kind of overt demonic activity. This is about the subtle agenda of evil.

How it gets played out. Sometimes what we're used to isn't right. Now think about that. Sometimes what's accepted, what you've heard, what your great grandfather told your grandfather who told your dad or mother that told you that's accepted, that you don't even question, it's just a world view. Sometimes it's not right.

It's not true. You don't even think about it. I'm going to suggest sometimes it's not only not right, it's diabolical. It's evil. It hurts people. And yet, the enemy has us going down a path because it's a tradition. It's just accepted.

Let me give you a few examples. How about the world is flat? For hundreds of years, people were locked into the world is flat. And some great Christians, who God made very smart, challenged that.

They were labeled as heretics. It was accepted. Everyone believed it.

Wasn't true. I wonder if you, like my wife likes the Turner channel that shows all the black and white movies. TCM or something. Humphrey Bogart. John Wayne. Everyone's got cigarettes. It was so cool, right? Cigarettes are cool. Cigarettes make you cool. A whole generation got into cigarettes. They got cool.

Then they got cancer. My dad was a three and a half pack a day guy. Marine. Cool.

16. World War II. He couldn't quit for the life of him. Or when I grew up, like a sun tan was how the deeper the tan, the healthier you are. Remember those days?

Didn't we all get that? Grandma, get out in the sunlight. Get out of this dark room. Come on, get out there and play. Take your shirt off. I did. I got freckles everywhere and then they cut a piece of cancer out of my throat.

Skin cancer. Do you get it? Here's all I want you to get. We all have traditions. I'm using the word tradition in its clear, definitional sense. Not like, oh a tradition is we put up lights at Christmas.

Well God bless you. Here's what a tradition is. A tradition is an inherited, established, customary pattern of thought or action or behavior. Like a religious practice or a social custom.

And then I love the second half of this. It's the passing down of elements of a culture from generation to generation. Especially by oral communities. Communication. So it seeps into your brain. You've heard it since you were a kid.

Everyone does it. Everyone accepts it. I'm going to suggest Satan's number two agenda to ruin, to kill, to destroy is to maintain the status quo. Wherever you're at, however you're moving, maintain the status quo in your life. Maintain the status quo in your marriage, your spirituality, in churches, in culture.

Just maintain the status quo. Because see, truth is powerful. Truth brings change. Truth liberates.

Truth heals. And so this is very, very subtle. In fact, here's my thesis. I'll put it in your notes.

My thesis is this. Traditions are not wrong, but they're dangerous. I'm not saying that traditions are wrong, things that are handed down, but they're dangerous. Follow along carefully. Traditions are the highway by which we pass on the values and principles that matter most.

Okay? That's how we pass on things that matter. Then circle the next word in your notes, will you?

Unfortunately. Unfortunately, over time, the means, the traditions we practice to remember those values and truths can take precedence over the truths themselves. This was so true in Jesus' day and it's so easy to look back and see it then, but harder now. But follow along as I read just a short passage from Matthew chapter 15. Jesus and teachers of the law came to Jesus from Jerusalem and asked, why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders?

They don't wash their hands before they eat, ceremonially washing their hands. Jesus replied, and why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your traditions? For God said, honor your father and mother, and anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death.

But you say that if a man says to his father or mother, whatever help you might otherwise have received from me, well, it's a gift devoted to God. He is not to honor his father with it. Thus, notice this line, you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition. You hypocrites, Isaiah was right when he prophesied, you people honor me with your lips, but your hearts are far from me.

They worship me in vain. Their teachings are but rules taught by men. Did you notice how many times the word tradition and nullifying the truth? If we had a little bit more time, basically what they did is that if you had some money and you were responsible to take care of your parents as they aged, what you would say, this money is korban, and that means it's dedicated to God.

And so it was like putting it in a little count over here that you were going to give to God, and then you'd say to your parents, I'd really love to help you, but I can't because it's, and of course the Pharisees were getting the money. There's good traditions, there's bad traditions, but all traditions have an element of danger. Because here's what happens, good traditions, religious traditions, social traditions, traditions around core and important values, first you do them to remind you of that important thing. Then over time they start to become a little bit more important and they consume the truth, and then pretty soon they bury the truth, and then pretty soon they eliminate the truth altogether. And so you have people practicing tradition thinking they are doing exactly what's right, that's why it's so diabolical.

I mean you're never ever in more danger in your entire life than when you're convinced how you're thinking, how you're behaving, and how you're acting is in line with what's true and right, and the fact of the matter is you're going south when you think you're going north. Notice the contrast between truth and tradition. Truth liberates, tradition perpetuates, truth gives life, tradition nullifies the word of God. Truth brings change, traditions the status quo, truth defines reality, traditions are built for stability, truth is threatening, isn't it?

You hear a new truth, I need to address this in my marriage, I need to do something with one of my kids, boy I've got an attitude, I had a friend who said to me, you need to deal with this, it's threatening. Tradition is comforting, it's been this way, I'm used to this way, we'll do it this way, and finally truth is dynamic, but tradition is static. Let me give you Satan's agenda and this is exactly how it works. Satan's agenda put, his goal is to do this, to separate the truth from the tradition so deceptively that sincere people, people like us, I mean if you weren't sincere you wouldn't be here. We want to learn about you Lord, we want to follow you, we want to live those kind of lives, we want to be pleasing, we want to grow, we're sincere. And the enemy wants to take some traditions in your personal life, some traditions in your family and some traditions in this church and some traditions in Christendom and get us all just little by little separating the truth from the tradition so slowly and so deceptively that we would hold to a form of godliness, that's the way Paul says it and we would deny its power.

That's scary. We're going to see the classic study in the New Testament on this. We're going to see a man who will defy hundreds of years of tradition at the cost of his life.

If you have your Bibles open to Acts chapter 6 or your PDA, your mobile device, what do you have, let me give you the scene in the background. Stephen was chosen as one of the seven to help distribute the food but God gave him these miraculous powers, he began to do miracles to authenticate this new work of God and then he was being challenged, he was talking about Jesus is the Messiah and so there's implications for the law and Jesus is the Messiah therefore there's implications for the temple and for the future of Judaism. And then the opposition came and so he's accused of blasphemy, that's the charge. Now you need to understand, it's a capital offense.

If he's found guilty, he dies. The two charges from the last part of chapter 6 are this, one, you're speaking against the holy place or the temple and two, you're speaking against the law of Moses. Now background wise, pull out your pen if you've got it, the historical setting is this, the Jews in Jesus' day had come to venerate and worship the land, Palestine, the law given by Moses and the temple, that unique location more than the purpose of the land, the law or the temple. In other words, tradition over time had so separated from the truth that the tradition ruled, so the Jews were saying this special temple, Palestine, this holy land and the law that we've received were superior, were better, they trafficked in it, they memorized it. They had an oral tradition called the Mishnah that had hundreds and thousands of other add-ons to it and the rabbis would say the Mishnah, the oral law is like a fence around the written law.

And so, I mean, if you grew up as a Jewish boy or a Jewish girl, I mean, there were rules upon rules and rules about the rules. And that's the world that we come to, but they forgot that the land was just a place where God would birth promises to Abraham. They forgot that the law was given to help us see that no one can keep it and there's a Savior coming. They forgot that the temple was just a place where God's presence would come and manifest itself, but you can never box God in.

It's living, it's vital, it's relational. So notice now, Stephen's defense, he challenges the status quo tradition concerning the land, the law and the temple with the, write this word down, truth. He challenges all three. These are the three most sacred things that the Jews of this time hold on to. He challenges all three with the truth that demand faith, radical change and then following God's promise, deliver the Messiah, Jesus. Now, as we walk through this, here's what you need to understand. If you're like me and you had never read this before in terms of really studying it, you could read they're putting Stephen on trial and then it just sounds like, well, he's talking about Old Testament history. This is about Abraham and then this is about Joseph and this is about Moses and then this is about, you know, the next guy, Joshua. And when you just read it cursory, you think he's kind of given an Old Testament history and when he gets done, they want to kill him. I mean, isn't this a little overreaction?

That was honestly. And then I realized I'm missing something here. See, he is poking, he is poking and he's pulling down the most deeply held traditions. So as I read this passage and you follow along, here's the three things I want you to get.

This is what he's doing and use it sort of as a filter. So as we walk through it together, because this is the difference between the tradition and the truth, three timeless truths. First, God's agenda has always been based on his promises, which necessitate progression and change. Now, as I read this, I want you to see when we talk about Abraham and then Joseph and others, he's going to slip this in. He's going to say it's about a promise. It requires change. It's dynamic.

It's living. There has to be faith. Second, God's blessings and purpose have never been restricted to Palestine or to the temple or just the Jewish nation. See, he's going to tell Israel's story, but he's going to tell the story and he's going to frame it in certain ways where he punches holes into traditions. So by the time he gets to the end, they will have got the message. The third timeless truth is that God's people have historically and repeatedly rejected God's man, the prophets, and God's plan of deliverance.

I want to walk through this and I want you to follow along with me and I'm going to take those key areas like, well, location. In what land did the blessing come? Where's the focus on promise? Where's the focus on deliverance? And I'll give it to you first and then as I read it, I want you to kind of imagine that you were a Pharisee and realize he is messing with everything near and dear to me. And then in just a little bit, unless we make this just a history lesson, I want to spend some time and say what traditions do we have? Personal ones, corporate ones, family ones that are diabolical, that we're on a path that we are as sincere as those Pharisees.

We are as blind as them and it's killing us and it's stealing joy and it's ruining relationships. So you ready? Okay. Stephen's message, truth or tradition, he's going to talk about Abraham first in his defense. Notice the location, Mesopotamia. Notice the promise, it's about the land and the descendants. His focus, he's going to say God's intent was to bless all nations. And then finally, he's going to say faith that always involves trusting God and for Moses, faith meant he had to leave.

He had to take a step out of his comfort zone. Let's pick up the story. Chapter 7 verse 1, he's on trial. Then the high priest asked him, are these charges true? To this he replied, brothers and fathers, listen to the God of glory. He appeared to our father Abraham while he was still in Mesopotamia before he lived in Haran.

He said, leave your country and your people. And God said, go to a land that I will show you. So he left the land of the Chaldeans and he settled it in Haran and after the death of his father, God sent him to this land where you're now living. He gave him no inheritance here, not even a foot of ground, but God promised him that he and his descendants after him would possess this land. Even though at the time of Abraham, he had no child. God spoke to him in this way, your descendants will be strangers in a country, not their own, and they'll be enslaved and mistreated for 400 years.

But I will punish the nation they serve and where they're slaves and afterward they will come out of that country and worship me in this place. Then God gave Abraham the covenant of circumcision and Abraham became the father of Isaac and he circumcised him on the eighth day after his birth. And later Isaac became the father of Jacob and Jacob became the father of the 12 patriarchs. Now his defense, he starts out, we can all agree like Abraham's the man, right?

And by the way, we all agree, they're nodding, there's no problem here. And let's see now, where did he get his calling? Was it Palestine? Oh, no, no, it was Mesopotamia.

Oh, okay, you know. And what was the basis? Was it because he followed a lot of rules?

No, no, no, it was a promise. God did the impossible. It required faith. And so he builds sort of step one of his case. Now he introduces through Abraham the 12 patriarchs. That's, you know, among Joseph and so he picks up the story now and he's going to talk about Joseph and the location now is Egypt. The promise, God gives Joseph. Remember, he gave him a dream and he said, one day you'll have a position and your brothers and your parents will bow down to you. And the focus is Joseph's rejection and God's deliverance.

I want you to look for that as I read that. He's going to say God saved his people through Joseph. But they rejected him. Do you see how he's kind of starting and there's just a little seasoning of someone else is going to get rejected later. Rejecting Joseph, rejecting Jesus, rejecting Moses, there's a pattern here coming.

They're sincere people. Finally, faith means enduring. Joseph endured rejection, he endured prison, he endured false accusation.

But he's always going to come back to it requires a living, vital faith. We pick up the story in verse nine because the patriarchs were jealous of Joseph. They sold him as a slave into Egypt.

But relationship, God was with him and rescued him from his troubles. He gave Joseph wisdom and enabled him to gain the goodwill of Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, and he made him ruler over Egypt and all of his palace. Then a famine struck all of Egypt and Canaan and with it great suffering and our fathers couldn't find any food. When Jacob heard that there was grain in Egypt, he sent our fathers on their first visit. On the second visit, Joseph told his brother who he was and Pharaoh learned about Joseph's family. After this, Joseph sent to his father Jacob and his whole family, 75 and all, and Jacob went down to Egypt where he and our fathers died.

Their bodies were brought back to Shechem and placed in the tomb that Abraham had bought from the sons of Hamor at Shechem for a certain amount of money. And so now he starts to build the case. And he said in our great history together of what God has done, there was a deliverer and the deliverer was given a promise. And the deliverer had to suffer unjustly. Are you starting to make some of the, you know, these are the smartest guys on the planet right now in terms of Judaism.

There's 70 of them. They know the Old Testament backward and forward. And he even uses this Shechem. You know what Shechem is? Shechem is the capital of Samaria.

It's like salt in their face or salt in the wound. He goes, now Mesopotamia is where it starts, blessing. And then the blessing comes out of Egypt and not only that but here's where he buried our forefathers. The blessing in the hand of God was even in the capital of Samaria.

The Jews hated the Samaritans. He built his case. He's pulling down one by one the pillars of tradition and he's taking back to the truth.

Next he'll go to the core. Moses is like bigger than Elvis. I mean he's a rock star of rock stars of rock stars. And not only is there that he gave the law, that he gave the Ten Commandments, that he wrote the Pentateuch, all that, but there was a lot of extra biblical information about his childhood and amazing stories.

I mean he was just venerated, nearly worshipped. So we're going to get the longest section with him. And then notice the location here. Where's the blessing occur? Midian. What's the promise? Moses, you will deliver my people.

What's the focus here? God's law is given. That's what the Pharisees like to champion.

But it's also rejected. And then finally faith means returning. See he's going to make the point that it's dynamic, it's relational, it's living, it's powerful, it's change, it's progressive. God's living. For one man faith means stepping out and leaving everything. For another man it's going back to where you don't want to go to.

There are no formulas. It's trusting and believing. And so now we pick up the story. Moses, the rock star revisited with some of the points highlighted not from tradition but from the truth. Verse 17. As the time drew near for God to fulfill his promise to Abraham, the number of our people in Egypt greatly increased. Then another king who knew nothing about Joseph became the ruler of Egypt.

He fought treacherously with our people and he oppressed our forefathers forcing them to throw out their newborn babies so that they would die. It was at that time that Moses was born and he was no ordinary child. For three months he was cared for in his father's house and when he was placed outside Pharaoh's daughter took him and brought him up as her own. And Moses was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and he was powerful in speech and in action. And now Moses is going to have a midlife crisis.

He was looking for his roots. At age 40 he decided to visit his fellow Israelites. He saw one of them being mistreated by an Egyptian so he went to his defense and he avenged him by killing the Egyptian. Moses thought that his own people would realize that God was using him to rescue them but they did not. The next day Moses came upon two Israelites who were fighting and he tried to reconcile them by saying, Men, you're brothers. Why do you want to hurt one another? But the man who was mistreating the other pushed Moses aside and said, Who made you ruler and judge over us?

Do you want to kill me the way you killed the Egyptian yesterday? And then when Moses heard this he fled to Midian where he settled as a foreigner and had two sons. Now you need to understand one of the greatest evidences of God's blessing is children. But where does Stephen remind his hearers that God's blessing happens? He gets two sons, not in Palestine, Midian.

We pick up the story. I am the Lord. After 40 years he looked closely and an angel appeared to Moses in the flames. It was at the desert of Mount Sinai and when he saw this he was amazed at the sight and went over to look more closely and he heard the Lord's voice. I am the Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. Moses trembled with fear and he did not dare to look. And then the Lord said, Take off your sandals.

The place where you're standing is holy ground. I've indeed seen the oppression of my people in Egypt and I've heard their groaning and I've come down to set them free. Now come, I will send you back to Egypt. This is the same Moses whom they had rejected with their words, who made you ruler and judge. He sent them to be their ruler and deliverer by God himself through an angel who appeared to him in the bush. He led them out of Egypt.

He did wonders and miracles and signs in Egypt and at the Red Sea and for 40 years in the desert. This is the Moses who told the Israelites, God will send you a prophet like me from your own people. If you have your own Bible, underline that verse, verse 37. This is not a verse that the Pharisees are quoting.

Notice what he's saying. He goes, Moses, your hero, the one we all so highly respect who gave us the law. He had his sons in Midian. There was God's blessing. Then he came and he got the hand of God upon him for this deliverance. And then remember, this is the Moses who told the Israelites, God will send you a prophet like me.

What do you mean like me? A deliverer. Someone that will take you out of your bondage. And all through the Old Testament, we have this picture of Egypt being this sort of place of bondage and sin. The salvation is through the Red Sea and into the promised land and new life. And Stephen is saying, there's a new Moses and the new Moses is the Messiah and he's going to build his case.

Chip will join us here in studio with his application in just a minute. You've been listening to the first part of his message, Maintain the Status Quo from his series, Diabolical, Satan's Agenda for Planet Earth, Including You. Satan's mission for every Christ follower is simple, total destruction. Unlike God's plans for you, which are rooted in grace and love, Satan wants to wreck your relationships, isolate you from God, and turn you into an ineffective Christian. But with God's help, we not only have the power to oppose Satan's tactics, we can actually defeat him. Through this series, Chip will teach us to recognize Satan's diabolical schemes and defend ourselves against his evil intentions. This is such an important topic, so we hope you'll make the time to be with us for this entire series. For complete series information and resources discounts for Diabolical, just go to LivingOnTheEdge.org or call 888-333-6003.

That's LivingOnTheEdge.org or call 888-333-6003. App listeners, tap Special Offers. Well Chip, we're in the middle of our mid-year match. Now there may be some people out there who don't know what the mid-year match is or why we do it. Could you take a minute and explain that?

Dave, absolutely. You know, this is something that we've done for a number of years that literally spontaneously happened about eight or nine years ago. And a small group of our ministry partners have this passion to support the ministry but also to inspire others to support the ministry and actually even beyond our ministry to learn to be generous. And so this month, dollar for dollar, every dollar a person gives all the way through July 6 will be matched.

So, you know, one becomes two, a hundred becomes two hundred. You get the idea. And what a lot of people don't know is that, you know, like 30-40% of the total giving income comes out of this mid-year match. And so it supports everything from the daily broadcast to staff to pastoral training.

And we'll talk throughout the month about what it does and the impact that it has. But I just want to encourage people as they kind of get this broadcast and whether it's on the app or a podcast or they order something from Living on the Edge at our headquarters, this match is critical to the mission of Living on the Edge of helping Christians live like Christians. And so my prayer is that as the Living on the Edge family listens that they would really become a part of the family and help us help others.

So thanks for asking, Dave. If God has been ministering to you through Living on the Edge and you want to get in on supporting the ministry, now would be the perfect time to join the team. Every gift will be doubled thanks to the generosity of a group of ministry partners. To send a gift, you can either call us at 888-333-6003 or go online to livingontheedge.org. App listeners just tap donate. Thanks in advance for asking God what he would have you do and then partnering with us however he leads. Well, now here's Chip with his final application for today.

As we close today's program, I just want to give you a heads up that there is a lot of application in our next broadcast. I mean, this is a very, very long chapter. I mean, Stephen gives this complete overview of the Old Testament. And then, you know, as I ended the teaching time, after they were nodding their heads and agreeing, that's right, that's our great heritage, then he started sort of poking at traditions. He started bringing up things. And you could just see, I mean, if we were there, I think their faces would have gotten redder and redder and redder. And then pretty soon it would be like, wait a second, this guy's reciting our history and now he's messing with stuff. And of course they get outraged and literally to the point where they stone him.

And so let me encourage you, you may want to listen to both these broadcasts, get them on the app. But here's what I would say the major point is, is that the traditions of men nullify the truth of God. And we all have them. And the traditions that we have that are most dangerous are traditions that we actually are pretty unaware of, that we have. In other words, they're so locked in our mind or in our group or in our church or our denomination or our contemporary worship or our not contemporary worship or when we meet or how we meet, I could go on and on and it's easy to see in other people. Traditions are hard to see in ourselves. What about any personal traditions? I know people that if they miss their quiet time, oh, I didn't get to read my Bible, I didn't get to pray, I'll probably have a flat tire, as though somehow it's a good habit. But you think God loves you any less?

Can't you talk with him all throughout the day? What traditions in your family, what traditions in your personal life, what traditions in your church might have become so important that they're actually nullifying you hearing the voice of God? Would you take just 30 or 60 seconds right now and sit quietly and ask God to bring any tradition to your mind that you need to get back to where it ought to be?

It's just an activity. It doesn't mean that's the way God works. Just before we close, would you pray for those who are feeling challenged to respond to Chip's encouragement right now?

There's always a spiritual battle when we feel prompted to draw near to God. Thanks for taking a minute to do that. And if there's a way we can pray for you, would you let us know? Call 888-333-6003 or email chip at livingontheedge.org. We'd love to hear from you. Well, until next time, for everyone here, this is Dave Druey saying thanks for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge.