Family, Farming, Country and… Potato Chips?

Yesterday morning, the sermon talked about how emotionalism can manipulate us in directions we don’t want to go. As an illustration, I talked about how advertising manipulates us in to buying products, using the 80’s Folgers Christmas commercial where the son comes home as a surprise, and wakes everyone up by making coffee. Yesterday, during the Super Bowl, there was a commercial about a daughter and her father working the fields together one last time before his retirement. It was emotional, it was about family and country, but it was also about selling potato chips.

And that is the way of the world: they pull on your heart strings, they tug you in this direction or that, and they desire to get you to buy in to whatever they’re selling, whether it is political, a product, or path of life. We have a society that is collapsing because everyone is ruled by their emotions instead of truth. But God tells us to listen to His voice. The world will distract us from that voice by getting us to “feel” something. It will seek an emotional response or excuse to not listen, one that will make it seem like a benefit to us. And this is what the ruler of this world has been doing to us from the beginning: “you won’t die, you will be like God” especially if you disobey Him, and make your own choices.

Satan, who rules this world for a time, offers a mockery of God’s image to us, while our Creator doesn’t offer a quick and easy path, and instead calls us to Holiness. As we follow God’s voice, we will suffer, whether ridicule, mockery, or self-denial, but God calls us to Holiness! And He believes in that Holiness so much that He sent His son to redeem us and wash us by His blood so that we can be reconciled from the lawlessness that our disobedience causes. We deserve death, but through Jesus Christ, God gives us a chance for eternal life, that if we believe, that is, if we follow Him, repent and are born again, and, indeed, stake all of our lives on Jesus’ and following His word. We are at our best only as we obey Him, our designer, author and creator, and so I would rather follow the Voice of Christ through the Holy Spirit and His word than be manipulated by the world.

2 Corinthians 11:12-15

And what I am doing I will continue to do, in order to undermine the claim of those who would like to claim that in their boasted mission they work on the same terms as we do. For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no surprise if his servants, also, disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their deeds.

2 Timothy 3

But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people. For among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth. Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth, men corrupted in mind and disqualified regarding the faith. But they will not get very far, for their folly will be plain to all, as was that of those two men.

You, however, have followed my teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness, my persecutions and sufferings that happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium, and at Lystra—which persecutions I endured; yet from them all the Lord rescued me. Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evil people and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.