Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - The Role of Emotion in Faith | New Testament | Philippians 3

Episode Date: September 4, 2023

Is it okay to be driven by emotion? Are feeling optional? IS there a difference between joy and happiness? In today's episode, Keith takes a look at Philippians 3 to answer these questions and more. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Join the TMBT community in reading the entire New Testament in one year. Get your FREE reading plan here. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Philippians 3

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. I think a lot of Christians are confused about the role emotions play in the Christian life. Since becoming a Christian, I've always been wary of my emotions, unsure of exactly what to do with them. Right after I became a Christian in college, I started participating in a Christian campus ministry. And in some of their materials that they used, they had what they called the trained diagram. It was a really simple diagram.

There were three cars in the train. The first was the locomotive, and it's identified as fact. The second car is the coal car, and it's labeled as faith. The last car, or the caboose, is labeled feelings. The booklet explained that the train would run without the caboose, but it didn't make sense to pull the train by the caboose. So the point seemed pretty clear. Facts drive or faith and feelings are option.

The diagram taught that you don't want your faith to be led by your feelings. And I understand that perspective, and you probably do too, because I'm sure we've all seen people who we'd describe as being driven by their emotions. We've seen people make unwise decisions based on how they feel in any given moment. We also know how quickly our own emotional state can change, which makes us hesitant to count on our emotions. we've probably even asked someone, why are you being so emotional and then told them to get their act together? But I don't think that denigrating emotions is faithful to the Bible.

Here's Philippians chapter 3 verse 1. Further, my brothers and sisters, rejoice in the Lord. Did you catch that rejoice in the Lord? This is a command to experience the emotion of joy. Some of us tend to reduce the Christian life to just a list of action. and duties. Read your Bible. Pray. Obey God. Now those are really good things, really important things, but we never want to bypass our heart as if we can just grind out the Christian life as an act of the will. Paul commands us to experience joy. He says rejoice. And he's not alone in that. In Psalm 69, it promises

that the humble will be glad. Or in Psalm 107, it says God, satisfies the longing souls. You even find prayers in which people are asking God to give them certain emotions. Psalm 86 says, gladden the soul of your servant. So they're praying that God would make them glad, fill them with the emotion of gladness. But it's more than just in the Psalms. 1 Corinthians 1622 says if anyone does not love the Lord, let that person be cursed. Or Matthew 13. The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hit it again, and then in his joy went and sold all that he had and bought the field. His obedience was motivated by joy. Emotions are one of the great drivers of the Christian faith, and we should

seek to bring all of our emotions under the lordship of Jesus. Rejecting or minimizing emotions comes more from Plato than the Bible. Plato separated reason from emotion, and he said reason was the better of the two. In fact, Plato didn't like poetry or plays or the arts because he thought they made us vulnerable to our emotions. But God didn't create two parts of the human, like the reason, the mind, and the emotions, the heart.

He didn't create two parts of us and then put them at war with each other. No, he created us as one being, and told us to love him with all our heart, with all our mind, with all our soul, and with all our strength. Imagine a husband coming home and saying to his wife that his love has progressed so far now that it's beyond feelings. In fact, his love now for her is based only on commitment. It just seems absurd, doesn't it? Because relationships are dependent on feelings. So then why try to tell us that our feelings are irrelevant?

when it comes to our relationship with Jesus. That takes us back to Philippians chapter 3, where Paul started by telling us to rejoice in the Lord. Now, sometimes Christians say there's a big difference between happiness and joy. They say happiness is a feeling, but joy isn't. Or sometimes Christians say that happiness is dependent on circumstances, but joy is a gift from God. But I'm not really sure that the Bible distinguishes between joy and happiness.

Now, of course, there are different kinds of joy in happiness. Hebrews 12 says there's the kind of happiness that comes from the fleeting pleasures of sin. And then there's the kind of happiness or joy that Paul talks about as being produced by the Holy Spirit in Galatian chapter 5. We know that Solomon sought after worldly happiness, but found it empty and unsatisfying. That's what the book of Ecclesiastes is about, that he sought happiness from all the things that the world offers, but found that it only left him feeling empty inside. The world's happiness fades, but the happiness that comes from obeying God lasts forever. That's why Paul tells us to rejoice in the Lord to find our happiness in God.

Psalm 1611 says, in God's presence is fullness of joy. So if you want more joy, if you want deeper happiness, then seek to be more and more in God's presence. Back to Philippians chapter three, Paul says that there are people who are infiltrating the church with a message that corrupts the gospel and steals people's joy. So here's verse two. Watch out for those dogs, those evil doers, those mutilators of the flesh. So this is a warning to be watchful for a certain kind of false teacher whose teaching poses a danger to Christian souls.

Paul doesn't pull any punches here. He calls them false teachers. He calls them dogs. Now, he's not referring to your pet poodle. When he uses the word dog, he's talking about a wild scavenger animal that travels in packs. And he's saying these false teachers, they steal Christian's joy by distorting the gospel. Now, here's the false teaching. They claim that to be a Christian, a person must believe in Christ and be circumcised. circumcision was one of the signs of being a part of the Jewish community. But Paul is saying that a Gentile doesn't have to become Jewish to be a Christian. They don't have to be circumcised.

The principle is this. It is always dangerous to add something to Jesus. The gospel isn't Jesus plus something else. It's Jesus and Jesus alone. Today, people aren't tempted to add circumcision to Jesus and say, that's who really is a Christian. But we are tempted to add other things. Some people will add baptism.

They'll say a Christian is someone who has Jesus plus baptism. That's what really saves you. Or others might say it's Jesus plus voting for or against a particular presidential candidate or a particular political party. I'm always surprised that some will say that all Christians must vote a particular way. and if someone doesn't vote the way they think they should, they doubt that person's faith. But remember this, the gospel is that only Jesus saves. The true Christian that experiences lasting joy is the one who doesn't put any confidence in themselves.

They don't put any confidence in their circumcision or baptism or their voting or anything else. They don't trust anything other than Jesus. Paul says if you think you have reasons to put confidence in who you are in your flesh and your resume, he says, well, I've got more than you. And then Paul proceeds to kind of list out in Philippians 3 his spiritual resume, which in the world of the first century Judaism was absolutely flawless. Paul's resume could not be taught. And yet it couldn't save him. And neither can our spiritual resume. Maybe our resume will say that we donated to good causes or that we grew up in a Christian family or that we serve a lot in church. Paul says that all those things that we trust in, we must now consider loss for the sake of Christ.

Or to say it another way, all those things that we've done, all those things that we put on our resume are garbage compared to trusting in Jesus alone. I'm sure you're familiar with Warren Buffett. He's one of the brightest investors in the world. and that has made him into one of the wealthiest people in the world. When he pledged to give a large portion of his estate a way to help people in need before he died, he said this, there's more than one way to get to heaven, but this is a great way. What Warren Buffett is saying is there's more than one way to get to heaven,

and my way of being generous to people in need is a great way of doing it. I think I would say to Warren Buffett that we really appreciate his generosity, and we're thankful for all the ways that his donations can really help make people's lives better. But there's only one way to God, only one way to salvation, only one way to be forgiven. And that's through Jesus and nothing else. Amen.