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Kettle Falls SDA Church

Eugene Prewitt: How to Learn to Think for Yourself Without Becoming Rebellious

Eugene Prewitt

Thinking Makes the Man

Turn with me in your Bibles to Isaiah chapter 9.

I'm feeling nervous to tell you stories, but I need to tell you A couple of them.

I was about 17 years old and I was working in a Outreach program for homeless people in Oklahoma City and 1 of the homeless men there was named Patrick and Patrick was a professed Satan worshiper.

Some of you do call Puerto Rican, I'll just tell you my opinion from my experience in that field.

I think two-thirds of the people or more that tell us that they're Satan worshipers are just kidding.

I think they're just doing it to laugh at us after we leave.

And you shouldn't take that so seriously as you might think you are inclined to take it typically when it happens at the door.

But I talked to Patrick week after week after week after week, and I don't think that he was making it up.

So if someone worships Satan, wouldn't you want to know why they would do such a silly thing.

I asked him and he explained it to me, it was quite logical.

In India, there are people who walk on hot coals and their feet don't even get, They don't get burned, they don't even get warm.

And Satan has mastered the art, as he explained to Patrick, or a demon did, of controlling flame.

And those who serve him willingly and openly And without any problems here on earth, we'll not have any problems in hell.

And I found it devolving on myself to explain to Patrick that the devil couldn't keep his end of that bargain.

And in fact, he can't even keep himself from burning when he gets there.

And that made Patrick really, really, can you imagine how that, if you really thought, if you thought through the story, how that would just, it'd be terrible, wouldn't it?

Isaiah 9, we're gonna look at a verse, but I'm not gonna tell you which verse yet, because I wanna quiz you.

You remember the locusts in Revelation 9 that they have stings in their tails.

You remember in Revelation 12 there's a dragon and with his tail he gathers 1 third of the stars.

God, just before this, speaks about how he's going to cut off Israel, the head and the tail, and then he explains what those metaphors mean.

Verse 15, the ancient and honorable, he is the head.

And the prophet that teaches lies, he is the Tail.

In Revelation 9, when you read about that, the tail of the locust, that is Muhammad.

Muhammad is the prophet that tells lies, that is the source of the problem that was caused by the Muslims there in Revelation chapter 9.

This isn't meant to be a Bible study in Revelation, and I'm sorry if it started out that way, but follow me through for a minute.

Turn with me in your Bibles to Revelation chapter 12.

We'll launch us into our series this weekend.

And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven and did cast them to the earth.

How was it that Satan caused a third of the angels to become demons?

The angels were perfect, and they became wicked through lies.

And the thought I want you to start with this evening that we're gonna build on is that you don't have to inherit a wicked inheritance.

You don't need to have anything like a time clock that says when you get to age 13, you start to lose it.

You don't need anything like that to create rebellion in you.

Even if you were as perfect as Adam and Eve before the fall, there is something the devil is skilled at that tends to create rebellion, and that is lies.

What we're talking about this weekend is about the art of learning how to think.

And when I say learning how to think, I mean learning how to think in such a way that the devil loses his ability to persuade you of his lies.

And if the devil can't persuade you of his lies, the ease that you will have in maintaining your consecration will just be incredibly increased.

It's much easier to submit to the Lord Jesus when you really understand correctly what is true.

And to whatever extent the devil can trick us in regard to what is true, to just that extent it becomes harder to submit to the Lord Jesus.

And So while the series in a way is prepared for young people, the fact of the matter is, it's for everybody.

I mean in this sense, I really don't think that the reason young people become rebellious is because, I don't think it has anything to do with their being young.

I don't think it has really anything to do with anything at all except for that there comes a point in life when we have to start thinking for ourselves and when that point comes, the devil has an advantage that he's been preparing a long time to trick us and he gets us.

And I think when we get older, all that really happens typically for most people is that the devil ends up becoming more subtle in his work, and so the tricks don't show up in such rebellious behaviors, but they do create the same kind of rebellious thoughts.

This is a long introduction, we need to get moving if we're going to get through even our first step.

So tonight we're gonna look at 10 different ways that the devil tricks people.

Tomorrow during Sabbath school, we're gonna look at 10 to 15 more ways that the devil tricks people.

I'm gonna be moving through these rapidly.

If you want to get notes on them and can't keep up, at bibledoc.org, that's B-I-B-L-E-D-O-C dot O-R-G, you can find an article called Tricks of the Devil.

And it would be just a great substitute for taking notes, except for that writing something down will help you remember.

And so I recommend you take notes even if you didn't need to do it for any reason besides that.

During the worship hour, the 11 o'clock service tomorrow, we'll be talking about how to form your own values.

I've been now in educational work for 19 years.

You have to ask me about that sometime, but I have, since 1991 I've been full-time teaching.

And I've seen many young people who at some point had the same values as their parents and were spiritually inclined, and who only 2 or 3 years later still were living a Christian life as it were, going to church and doing mission activities, but whose values had just completely changed.

And I'd like us to study during the worship hour tomorrow how to make your own values in such a way that you don't end up being rebellious against what God has said.

There's an art to that and we're gonna study it.

Then in the afternoon we're gonna talk about that very delicate time of life.

I think for me it happened at age 11, for some people 11, 12, 13, when you become disillusioned with your parents.

I think parents shouldn't be too ashamed to admit that at some point they should expect their children become disillusioned with them.

I mean that at some point, at some age, children just believe and love their parents and believe everything they say and that's just not appropriate for the long term, right?

I don't see enough parents going, uh-huh, but it's not.

It's not, the truth is you don't want your children disbelieving everything you say because you say it.

But when children become disillusioned with their parents, that's a very, a very normal time for the devil to enter in with a special bag of tricks to create rebellion.

And then our last talk tomorrow afternoon, we'll be talking about what Ellen White calls diseases of the imagination.

And I think you'll just be fascinated by how many of the normal ways that we think are diseases.

I mean, if you think that you know someone who's ill and gets colds and fevers and flus quite often.

When you understand the idea of the disease imagination, I think you'll find that a large percentage of us are just perpetually ill in the head.

And that if we can understand the way the imagination is intended to work, it will save us a great deal of hassle.

Turn with me in your Bibles to 2 Corinthians.

2 Corinthians, we're looking at chapter 2.

Everything we've said so far has been introductory material.

It says, lest Satan should get an advantage of us, for we are not ignorant of his devices.

To whatever extent that verse is true in your experience, to just that extent, this series isn't needed for you.

But I think for a great majority of people, it isn't as true as it ought to be that we are not ignorant of his devices.

Tricks of the Devil

Elmight describes in that book how our mind was meant to be able to grow, but the way that it grows is by contemplating large and deep profound ideas.

Thinking about eternity, thinking about the love of God, considering the idea of our destiny and the breadth of our duty, these are all very large ideas.

We can't really comprehend them, but we can think about them.

And in the process of thinking about them, our minds become stronger.

When we don't think about things larger than we can easily grasp, our minds become weaker.

Very much like an arm that's in a cast or a body that's forced to lie for weeks in a bed.

Have any of you ever had that kind of experience with the arm in the cast or the body in the bed?

The strength was there, but as it wasn't used, it's lost.

And many of us have lost the strength of our mind.

We've lost the strength of our mind in this respect because we haven't thought about those large ideas, haven't spent the proper time contemplating them.

Our minds have narrowed down, so they're only capable of dealing with little, "'commonplace human, the kind of stuff "'that happens all around us.'" You wanna read that chapter in the book Education, the chapters that are there.

We haven't read anything yet here in Job 38.

Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?

Job 38 2 is such an interesting question because it looks like it's being given in reference to Job's 3 friends.

And when I read, or 4 of them really are involved in the book of Job.

When I read what they have to say, these men had a great deal of what I would call knowledge.

In fact, if you're not careful, I challenge you to try this for about 10 years.

Whenever you see a quotation from the book of Job, look it up in your Bible and see who's speaking.

And I think you'll find that about 1 1⁄4 of the quotations from the book of Job are being quoted from these friends who darkened counsel by words without knowledge.

Did that make any sense to you what I just said?

But what they say has enough idea or thought in it that it looks sensible.

You can almost make proverbs out of some of these things.

But what did Jesus, what did God say in Job 38 about their words?

Let me jump into my first point and then we'll get to our list and move through it very rapidly today.

Have you ever heard this idea that we're to teach the young people how to be thinkers and not merely reflectors of men's thoughts?

And the way we usually shorten that is we say we want to teach them how to think for themselves.

And the way we tend to say it when we're young is I want to learn to think for myself.

And when we take this whole idea of thinking for ourself, the trick of the devil in this is to put the emphasis on myself and not on think.

And I just want to portray this idea as I'm understanding it.

There is a difference between thinking for myself and concluding for myself.

There is a difference between thinking and opining.

But we don't use the word opining, so I should explain what I mean.

The devil would like to so confound those ideas that when you come to your own conclusion, you figure that you're thinking for yourself.

But thinking and concluding are so far from being the same thing, they're the difference between working through the problem and writing down an answer.

Can you see it in your algebra class, how it would go if you decided that you were just going to write down whatever answer you thought would be kind of pretty at the end of the equal sign?

I've said that 4 times, I should move on.

So trick number 1 that we're going over today is the trick, the devil has told many young people that they will not enjoy heaven.

They won't like heaven, heaven will be boring.

That trick is rarely used on people over the age of 18.

I think it's just, it's more often used right around the ages of 11 and 12.

Because when you get a little older, you can see right through it usually, right?

You can just sort of, just looking, you realize that the same God who gave me taste buds so that I can enjoy good apples, the same God who gave me an ability to enjoy being able to move quickly, the same God who gave me an ability to enjoy love and affection, He's the 1 who invented heaven.

And the idea that I am going to have less capacity to enjoy, like can you see how inconsistent this is?

To think that in heaven I'm gonna have more capacity to grow, more capacity to think, a bigger body, a stronger mind, more capacity to live, like I'll never die, and then to think I'm gonna have less capacity to enjoy.

And I'm really, our first point here is for the very young because you'd be surprised at how consistently the devil does tell young people that they're not going to enjoy heaven because they associate heaven with the restriction of the things they like to do for fun.

Maybe we can come back to that in an afternoon session for a minute or 2 of development.

Why don't you turn there with me for a minute, Proverbs 16.

No, it's not Proverbs, it's Psalms, Psalm.

It says, thou wilt show me the path of life.

Listen carefully, at thy right hand there are, what's the word?

And so we talked about yesterday, last night, how rebellion, at least originally, sprang up through the dissemination of lies.

That is when people don't really understand what God thinks and does and how he is, they're not nearly as inclined to submit to him.

And you see now why the devil would like to tell very young people that they won't enjoy heaven?

It's because of the beautiful truth that if they knew how much they would enjoy heaven, they surely wouldn't let anything keep them from getting there.

Turns me and your Bibles to Matthew chapter 12.

We're on to our second point already today.

The second trick of the devil we're talking about this morning is what I call the prove it trick.

Then certain of the scribes and of the Pharisees answered saying, Master, we would see a sign from thee.

You know, it's because they didn't want to believe.

And before I expose this trick for the trick that it is, I'd just like us to be able to self-identify the cause of how it works so well.

It's when we don't want to believe that we tend to demand proof.

If someone came with evidence that eating apple pie was good for us, we would likely accept it without any checking of references.

That's when we don't like the conclusion.

My father died of lung cancer 8 years ago.

And dying of lung cancer, at least for my father, was a slow, painful, and very hard to watch process.

Do you know in the 19th century, in the 1800s, there were many people that suspected that smoking was bad for your health.

There were people who observed that smokers tend to cough more than others, and that coughing people tend to get sick more than others, and that people that tend to cough a lot and get sick a lot, if it becomes a continual, habitual thing, they often die of tumors.

People did observe things like that, even in the 1800s, and there were people who said that smoking is bad for your health.

At the same time, there were others that observed that people who cough, many times smoking will help calm down their coughing.

And there were a number of people who made presentations to the effect that smoking might be good for you, at least for some ailments and some circumstances.

Now let me just jump to my point because it isn't about smoking at all.

It's that sometimes it's very dangerous to wait until proof is available.

I mean that smoking would kill someone in 1820 the same way it killed my dad in 2001.

My dad had a whole lot more evidence than the man who would die in 1820, but the cigarettes hurt them just the same.

Determining Your Own Values

There is a type of common speech mistake that people make.

I'm 1 of those people and I make it commonly.

And that is when I am thinking about 1 thing while talking about another thing, 1 of the words that fits in well with what I'm thinking ends up replacing the right word for what I'm saying.

Can any of you understand what I'm talking about, this kind of mistake?

And 1 of the most common ways that happens in my teaching is between the books of Daniel and Revelation.

Particularly between Daniel 12 and Revelation 12.

You don't need to turn to either 1 of those.

But you understand, Both those chapters have 12.

And in my mind, Daniel and Revelation are very related to each other already, So those chapters are in such a similar box that often when I'm intending to say Daniel 12, I say Revelation 12.

And often when I'm intending to say Revelation 12, I say Daniel 12.

There is another book like that that I often mix up with Revelation.

I mean that often when I'm intending to say Romans such and such, because I'm so often thinking about Revelation, I say, revelation such and such.

And I usually don't catch that I did it either until my students say it doesn't say that and then we figure out what's going on.

And the reason I told you all that is because That obviously happened when I was typing the scripture for this service.

I was thinking Romans and I typed Revelation, and so you heard a most interesting scripture, Revelation 14, verse 4 and 10 through 12.

I almost wanted to preach on it when I heard it.

But if you would turn with me in your Bibles to Romans chapter 14, I want to show you what I intended to type.

Who art thou that judgest another man's servant?

Yes, he shall be holden up, for God is able to make him stand.

And verse 10, But why dost thou judge thy brother?

Or why dost thou set at naught thy brother?

For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ.

For it is written, as I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue confess to God.

So then, every 1 of us shall give account of himself to God.

Today we're talking about in this particular sermon how to arrive at your own set of values in such a way that they'll be the right set of values, in such a way that you won't end up being rebellious, in such a way that you'll end up being content when you stand before the judgment seat of Christ.

And before I go into methods that are so related to arriving at a correct set of values, I want us to catch this idea in verse 4.

That is that It is inappropriate for me to evaluate your standing before God on the basis of your conclusions.

And it is inappropriate for you to evaluate my standing before God on the basis of my conclusions.

I want to say this in a different way where you can see it as it is in the passage.

Martin Luther and Karlstadt debated over 1 issue I mentioned last evening, and that was the Sabbath.

Martin Luther was wrong and Karlstadt was right.

But it would be wrong to conclude from that that Martin Luther was not consecrated.

And in fact, it might even be premature to conclude from that that Karlstadt was consecrated.

I would like to create in your mind an understanding that there is a disconnect between accuracy of conclusions and the consecration of the heart.

Consecration leads to accuracy, but it often does it on a very slow and laborious journey.

And accuracy sometimes comes through some other means than consecration.

For example, believing what someone told you that happened to be consecrated.

Or growing up in a home that happened to teach you the right conclusions.

That there's quite a disconnect between being accurate and being consecrated.

It might be interesting to you to know that John Bunyan, the 1 who wrote Pilgrim's Progress, the 1 that Elmight writes so glowingly about in the Great Controversy, that he wrote quite a number of books.

And 1 of his books is about the seventh day Sabbath.

The entire book is written to show that it's no longer binding on us on this planet.

It's quite a well-written book, and I think I'd almost say I don't recommend reading it.

But I cannot, on the basis of reading that book say that John Bunyan was not a consecrated man.

Do you understand the point I'm trying to communicate to you?

It's this point in verse 4, who art thou that judgest another man's servant?

Series

Eugene Prewitt: How to Learn to Think for Yourself Without Becoming Rebellious

Determining Your Own Values

Transcript

Parent Series

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