VAIN IMAGINATIONS

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Aloha Saints, Family and Friends,   Beloved of Jesus and me,   John 3 and 17

VAIN IMAGINATIONS   “WORTH CONSIDERING”    2/28/22    From Ken Smith<><

The word vain if often overlooked when reading the Bible,   it is an important word for us as we grow up in a world full of vanity and are so use to it that it is normal for use to be vain and to not even to know it.  So in my determination to continue to only seek God’s Truth so that we can enjoy the Book of Acts coming alive again, please stay with me in this.

Oxford Dictionary:
vain /vān/ adjective 1. having or showing an excessively high opinion of one’s appearance, abilities, or worth. “their flattery made him vain”  Similar: conceited , narcissistic, self-loving, in love with oneself,  self-admiring, self-regarding, wrapped up in oneself, self-absorbed, self-obsessed self-centered,  egotistic,.  egotistical,  egoistic ,  egocentric, egomania.  proud haughty,  arrogant,  boastful,  swaggering,  imperious,  overweening,  cocky,  affected vainglorious,  peacockish,   think too highly of oneself,  think a lot of oneself.   (Vanity is produced by pride.)

Opposite:  modest,  2.  producing no result; useless,  “a vain attempt to tidy up the room”
Similar:  futile,  useless,  pointless,  worthless, nugatory,  to no purpose.  (Modesty is produced by fear.)   ( Loving Humility and Obedience comes only by faith and free will.)

We have all heard in a sermon somewhere, the following:  “We only get to keep, what we send ahead.”  So if today was your eternal report card day?   How much of what you have done would have served the Kingdom of God and others, (really) and how much would have simple,  just served yourself?  

So let us look at the word vain or vanity and what the Bible says about it?

‘You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain [that is, irreverently, in false affirmations or in ways that impugn the character of God]; for the Lord will not hold guiltless nor leave unpunished the one who takes His name in vain [disregarding its reverence and its power].” First Commandment.  Duet.5:11.  (In other words don’t say that GOD said or did something that HE did not say or do.   I know people that everything they do, they say it was of God even when  not,  and never look back to see if it was.  

“They rejected His statutes and His covenant which He made with their fathers, as well as His warnings that He gave them. And they followed vanity [that is, false gods, idols] and became vain (empty-headed). They followed the [pagan practices of the] nations which surrounded them, although the Lord had commanded that they were not to do as they did.”   2 Kings 17:15.  ( Every time we go to a so called church it is mixed with pagan practices and we don’t even know it because we tend to be Biblically Illiterate. Can you pick out the traditions of men that prevent God’s power from blessing the sick? )

Unless the Lord builds the house, They labor in vain who build it; Unless the Lord guards the city, The watchman keeps awake in vain.  Psalm 127:1″   “They worship Me in vain [their worship is meaningless and worthless, a pretense],”     “‘This people honors Me with their lips,  But their heart is far away from Me. Matt.15:8-9″   “But in vain do they worship Me, For they teach as doctrines the precepts of men.  Teaching the precepts of men as doctrines [giving their traditions equal weight with the Scriptures].  Mark 7:7. “    “By this faith you are saved [reborn from above—spiritually transformed, renewed, and set apart for His purpose], if you hold firmly to the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain [just superficially and without complete commitment].” 1 Cor.15:2.    “Working together with Him, we strongly urge you not to receive God’s grace in vain [by turning away from sound doctrine and His merciful kindness].”

“But as it is, you boast [vainly] in your pretension and arrogance. All such boasting is evil.”  James 4:16.   “Whose fate is destruction, whose god is their belly [their worldly appetite, their sensuality, their vanity], and whose glory is in their shame—who focus their mind on earthly and temporal things.” Phil. 3:19.     “For uttering arrogant words of vanity [pompous words disguised to sound scholarly or profound, but meaning nothing and containing no spiritual truth], they beguile and lure using lustful desires, by sensuality, those who barely escape from the ones who live in error.”  2 Peter 2:18.

So vain, vanity, Pride is what destroyed Adam & Eve and every day we are faced with the same three temptations as taught by John in 1 John 2:16:   “Do not love the world [of sin that opposes God and His precepts], nor the things that are in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For all that is in the world—the lust and sensual craving of the flesh and the lust and longing of the eyes and the boastful pride of life [pretentious confidence in one’s resources or in the stability of earthly things]—these do not come from the Father, but are from the world. 17 The world is passing away, and with it its lusts [the shameful pursuits and ungodly longings]; but the one who does the will of God and carries out His purposes lives forever.    So what we see here as faith is the opposite of fear, most vanity is fear based.  Many of the things that we do in life are fear based.  We even tend to bend the rules to have a better retirement out of fear.  The fear that GOD will not really take care of us.   So fear is faith going backwards and causes us to use vanity to try to be secure.   But the only true security in this world is in our Creator through Christ Jesus as our LORD.  Much of the world now is in vanity and fear now as we come to a close of this age, Luke 21:24.

So in looking at the scripture in Mark 7:6-9:   “Jesus  replied, “Rightly did Isaiah prophesy about you hypocrites (play-actors, pretenders), as it is written [in Scripture],

‘These people honor Me with their lips,  But their heart is far from Me.‘They worship Me in vain [their worship is meaningless and worthless, a pretense],Teaching the precepts of men as doctrines [giving their traditions equal weight with the Scriptures].’ You disregard and neglect the commandment of God, and cling [faithfully] to the tradition of men.”    And we wonder why there is no Power in the so call church today.   It is because much of what we do is done through vanity and man made traditions in what we present as “God’s Truth” in church today.   Paul gave us a prophesy about it in 2 Tim.3 and in verse 5 gave us this warning, “ Holding to a form of [outward] godliness (religion), although they have denied  its power [for their conduct nullifies their claim of faith]. Avoid such people and keep far away from them.”

So I am now looking for Biblical Christians who are interested in unity and in the restoration of the Power of God to the Church which has been mostly lost through the vain traditions and the commandments of men.   “And the people from the towns in the vicinity of Jerusalem were coming together, bringing the sick and those who were tormented by unclean spirits, and they were all being healed.”  Acts 5:16.

Yours, in HIS great Love and wonderful Grace & Mercy,   Ken<>< www.OhanaChurch.Life
( Add / Delete, ken@trinity-aloha.org   “Worth Considering” library, link on Homepage. )