Folly Becomes Evident to All

1/6/2007

Situations like Jannes and Jambres will come up from time to time and we need to have a heart of courage to deal with it, but I don’t assume that’s what this situation is at all. Let’s try humility and peace and thorough explanation and see if God can then mend lives back together again.

And do you know what happens when you approach it with wisdom, humility and kindness? If there are one or two people out of many that are stirring up all the trouble and many, many people are just innocent, God will begin to take His lambs away from the people who have false motives if you approach it with humility, wisdom and kindness. You won’t have to do anything. You won’t be trying to get them to come away from the situation because that is dishonest stewardship.

God, Himself, will show them. They’ll begin to See, and they’ll say, “I don’t see the heart of Jesus here anymore. I was fooled for awhile, but I need to start backing away.” And they’ll find other brothers and sisters; they may even find you guys. But God will bring that judgment, and the ones stirring up the trouble will be revealed as it was with Jannes and Jambres. “Their folly will become evident to all.” Their fake, counterfeit life will become evident if there is anybody like that in this picture. Maybe there’s not. I don’t believe there necessarily is.

Do you remember who Jannes and Jambres were in the Old Testament? They were the magicians who counterfeited all of Moses’ miracles. And Paul said in the New Testament that there would be people who look as impressive as Moses, but they’ll be counterfeits of Moses. It will look like God is on their side, but there is darkness in their heart, and their folly—the fakeness of their life—will become evident to all.

So when a situation like Jannes and Jambres does come along five or ten years from now, you won’t have to be the ones to try to understand and solve all the problems. If you just speak the truth in love and do your part to serve, love, and be humble, then God will make these things evident to other people. You don’t need to try to steal anybody away from anybody. You don’t need to protect anybody from anybody. God is the Great Shepherd of His sheep and He will make sure that the folly becomes evident to all when the time comes. It’s not your job to point out everyone’s folly.

That’s right!

I know it comes up from time to time even in the denominations; it’s not our job to point out the follies. It’s our job to try to seek and save that which is lost and to encourage people as we can. It’s our job to show them the words of Jesus and the words of the apostles and ask them to be obedient to the Word of God with the relationships they have wherever they are. Then God will do whatever God wants to do. We’re not trying to get people from here to there and from them to us. There is no “them to us.” Jesus is Jesus and our job is to help people know God better. Our job is to help others to know the Word of God, because there’s a famine in hearing the Word. “My people are scattered because of wolves and because of famine.” Our job is to feed them and protect them, not to try to gather them to ourselves.

We’re not trying to start anything. We’re not trying to compete with anybody. We’re simply trying to make sure Jesus is honored in every life that we meet. And we help others obey in the environment that they’re in. If they will obey in the environment they’re in, then things will begin to happen. Either there will be total repentance and ALL of them will become part of our lives or they’ll get thrown out of the group they are a part of and maybe then they’ll become part of our life. But we’re not trying to get them to “come” or “go” or “do” or “think badly” about someone else. We’re not about negative things, we’re about positive things. If we help people be filled with the positive, they’ll take care of all the negatives on their own. We don’t have to be a bearer of bad news. We’re a bearer of Good News.

If it would help the brothers in other places to understand a little better what we have spoken of instead of your having to try to remember it all, there’s actually a recording of it that we could send to you, if you want it. Perhaps, it would help them understand what we spoke of—that we mean them no unkindness and we mean them no harm. We only want Jesus to be exalted and His Body unified. If it would help them to understand what we spoke about, for them to hear it themselves, then they can “be” here with us even though they weren’t. We can send you a cassette tape with it all on there, if you want us to. It’s up to you. Would you like that?

Yes! I think we can gain from this. Yes, Yes!

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