The Enemy Delights in Your Good Intentions

Sermon outline

Compassion without boundaries turns mercy into enablement: stop rescuing the persistent fool and discern the wicked manipulator, because when you play saviour you stand in God's way and let poison into the well you drink from.

1. Number one: the persistent fool

   Like a dog returning to its vomit, the persistent fool keeps going back to destructive choices, self-inflicted pain and cycles of dysfunction out of stubborn pride. We all come to the Lord broken, but the broken repent and let God restore them, and can be discipled; the fool cannot be discipled, and demands a rescue while planning the next way to sin.

   “The fool stumbles and defends the very stone he tripped on.”

   • Proverbs 26:11

2. Rescuing the fool stands in the way of God's correction

   The Lord disciplines those He loves, and discipline is love in action, so every lifeline thrown to the persistent fool moves us from mercy to enablement. It delays their deliverance, exhausts our own strength and makes us an idol in their life. Let them feel the weight of their decisions, because the weight brings repentance before the Lord, not an apology to you. Whatever a man sows, he reaps.

   Illustration: The friend who keeps finding the same toxic partner. The relative who lives beyond their means, drives a bigger car than yours and phones for ten thousand when the bills come, while you budget their children's school fees, at schools dearer than your own children's, alongside your own groceries.

   “Your provision gives them permission to behave the way that they do.”

   • Hebrews 12:6
   • Galatians 6:7

3. You are not the saviour

   There is only one Saviour, and He said pick up your cross, not theirs. Every good and perfect gift comes from above, not from the person next to you, and Jesus told His disciples to shake the dust off their feet where they were not received. The father of the prodigal knew where his son was at every point but did not get involved, until the son came to himself. Pray for them and love them, but take your hand off.

   Illustration: His three-part rule: he walks with someone one mile, then a second, then a third, and then gives them only the scripture and lets them go through their process. Giving to the persistent fool is like watering a garden with a bucket that has a hole in the bottom.

   “Do not confuse enablement with love. Do not mistake rescue with righteousness.”

   • James 1:17
   • Matthew 10:14
   • Luke 15:17

4. Number two: the wicked manipulator

   Six things the Lord hates, seven are an abomination, ending with the one who sows discord among brothers, which strikes at the fabric of God's church and lies at the heart of every split. Discernment is a muscle that grows as you exercise it. The manipulator works subtly, behind smiles and flattery: praying for you, praising your skill, then turning you against your spouse, a leader or a brother you never had a problem with.

   Illustration: Someone tells a man he is such a man of God, but his wife, hmm. Yet a husband and wife are one flesh, so nobody can love you and hate your wife; it is like stabbing you and trying to cut you in half.

   “To help such a person or people without discernment is not an act of righteousness, but it is a partnership with wickedness.”

   • Proverbs 6:16-19

5. The enemy delights in your good intentions

   A good intention is how permission gets granted. You help out of goodness while poison goes into the well you drink from, and then your finances, job, children and marriage are affected and you cannot pinpoint why. Soon you are alienated from your own church, wondering whether your season there is over. Satan banks on our compassion and weaponises our mercy to drain discernment and erode spiritual authority. Continue in what you have learned, and draw from the well where God placed you.

   Illustration: Someone compliments your gym muscles and your business, then asks whether you are still going to that church, and invites you to a wonderful event at theirs.

   “Grace cannot function where you are not assigned.”

   • 2 Timothy 3:13-14

6. Our job is to give them the word

   We are not called to expose anything but to tell the world about Christ, make disciples and heal the sick. His parents never went chasing prophets; any word must line up with Scripture, because the Holy Spirit always speaks in line with the word. The persistent fool and the manipulator can even stop your hand from sowing, so your heart, head and hand must be in unison with God.

   Illustration: When a visiting prophet arrived with a word, Dad would say that is wonderful, but where did that man come from?

   “Our job is to give them the Word, not to give them us.”

   • 2 Peter 1:19
   • John 14:2
   • Proverbs 11:30

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