Overview
Rev. Rico Magnelli examines “Resetting Boundaries” through Proverbs 22, Genesis 1, Jeremiah 1323, Matthew 627, showing how boundaries, nature, limits shape a believer’s relationship with God, daily choices, and service to others.
Transcript
Understanding Resetting Boundaries
Please turn in your Bibles to Proverbs 22. Resetting boundaries. The erosion of physical, moral, and spiritual boundaries is epidemic.
It is also calculated, systematic, and directed by the spiritual darkness of this world. Boundaries are lines of demarcation that limit life, authority, and activity in all spheres. Nature has built in boundaries or limits, and certainly the wisdom for societies would be to follow suit and have them as well.
Without these boundaries, there is no accountability, and navigating any type of relationship becomes increasingly difficult, and eventually chaos follows. When lines of demarcation become blurry or obfuscated, any distortion can be introduced, and boundaries in life keep man safe and prospering. Consider how roads have boundaries and limits to keep travelers safe and preferably reach their destination.
For the most part, we get to choose and make decisions along our journey as we travel the highways and byways, but there are still limits. Like roads, there’s plenty of open road preferences in life. But God has also placed like double yellow lines to warn us.
God has also placed double yellow lines to warn us to adjust back to the middle of the road if we get too close to the edge. In some cases, He even put in guardrails or medians, if you will, to prevent us from going over the edge. There’s wonderful grace and mercy, but here in Proverbs 22-28, it says, Remove not the ancient landmark or border which thy fathers have set.
That ancient landmark or border can be referring to property, and it has another application. It can refer to moral boundaries as well. And the fathers are spiritually minded God-respecting teachers who follow God’s plan.
Anyone that knows anything about history, land disputes have been a source of contention for mankind for thousands and thousands of years locally and even internationally. But God tells us, don’t remove those ancient borders, don’t remove those landmarks, don’t remove those boundaries or those limits. And we’re going to see how this develops.
Look at Genesis. See, nature has boundaries and limits. Just look at Genesis chapter 1 verse 11.
I’ll just read one verse. And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after its kind, whose seed is in itself upon the earth, and it was so. So God produced apple trees to proliferate and make more apple trees, not to make kangaroos.
The Biblical Foundation
Apple trees make apples and apple trees. It’s a very clear line of demarcation. God says after its kind.
Mankind wants to add all sorts of labels, categories, and phylum scientifically, but basically God says whatever can reproduce is a category. He put limits on reproduction. So nature teaches boundaries.
Nature also teaches causality. That’s right. Just look at the first verse of the Bible.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The text is heavens and earth. So who was the catalyst? Who was the mover? And what was the result? What was the outcome? God was the mover.
God was the catalyst. He was the cause. And then the outcome was the heavens and the earth.
And you can find this pattern throughout the Bible. See, cause and effect is very important and helps us understand. It helps us understand relationships between what catalyzed or what affected this outcome.
That’s part of the boundaries that God set up. Like I said, apple trees come from apples. Just because people want to change something doesn’t mean it’s so.
Jeremiah 1323 says, can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? It’s a rhetorical question because those changes are impossible because they’re genetically programmed in these situations. Here’s another verse. Matthew 627 says it this way.
Jesus Christ. He says, which of you, by taking thought, can add one cubit unto his stature? Stature here would be referring to genetic age specific growth. When a child is born, they don’t come out as a six foot, 220 pound man.
Examples and Spiritual Lessons
They come out as a six, seven, eight, nine pound baby. It’s very age specific. So Jesus Christ is saying, well, which one of you, by just concentrating and getting anxious about this, can change your age specific growth? It’s very individual to each person.
Can’t be done. See, there are boundaries and there’s limits. And this is so vital and so important for us to understand because right now, many of them are being eroded.
They’re being swept aside as if they mean nothing. And it’s all to divide us from the things that God would have us have and enjoy in this life. Look at Genesis chapter two, please.
Genesis chapter two, God tells Adam in verse 17, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shall not eat of it. For in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shall surely die. He put a boundary.
He put a limit. And he also explained a cause and effect, didn’t he? If you do this, this is what’s going to happen. And death brings a finality to life.
It is a limit. It’s a boundary that cannot be crossed without God’s help. Man can’t cross death on his own.
And then the serpent here in Genesis chapter three states this. In Genesis chapter three, verse four, and the serpent said unto the woman, ye shall not surely die. There was a process here where he deceived the woman.
He beguiled her, don’t know how long it took, but she’s being deceived from a limit and a boundary and a cause and effect that God instituted. And this is moving amongst many people where they don’t understand the very basics of nature and how nature works and how God designed nature to work. There are boundaries.
There are limits. People can imagine whatever they want to. It doesn’t really matter what they imagine, because there are certain scientifically proven limits and boundaries.
Faith in Action
I can imagine that I’m a chicken, and I guarantee you I will never wake up and be a chicken. It’s not going to happen. So this seems very simplistic, I know.
And this seems like, well, Rico, I know I get this. I understand this. But the depth of it has to live within our hearts.
Look at Second Timothy, please. Resetting the boundaries is so important because without these boundaries, there is no accountability, and there is very difficult navigation when it comes to any type of relationship of any kind. There has to be firm boundaries, limits.
And you start with nature, because one of the lessons of nature is it has limits to life, boundaries, if you will, and it has cause and effect. You can go outside tomorrow and look at your tree, and you can tell it to be whatever you want it to be. It won’t change.
That tree is going to remain the same. This illustration is so vivid and so clear, it is just undeniable. And this is where people begin to learn about God who created the heavens and the earth.
That he instituted boundaries and limits. That he instituted cause and effect. Without understanding that, people will never understand the things of God and they’ll be deceived a lifetime.
Second Timothy chapter 2. In verse 6, it says, the husbandman, that’s a cultivator of what we might call a farmer, that laboreth must be first partaker of the fruits. This is someone that labors in the field. This is someone that understands that the ground must be fallowed, that you churn up that earth, that you plant the seed at the right time, that you water that seed.
And then as God partners with that farmer, he causes it to grow. And then he is a first partaker of that fruit, that benefit. Farmers understand cause and effect very, very well.
They see it all the time in nature. And it reinforces within them a common sense that is so powerful that you’d never talk them out of it. The further people get away from the simplicity and beauty and diversity of nature and move into man-made environments, the easier it is for them to fall prey to boundaries being eroded, right? I’m not saying cities are evil.
And that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that the hustle and bustle and man-made systems and environments don’t reinforce this basic principle like it would for someone who’s a farmer. Look at the next verse.
Walking in Love and Confidence
Consider what I say. Don’t blow through this. Stop and think.
Consider what I say, and the Lord give the understanding in what? All things. Because we must understand that there are principles in nature that God instituted, as we read briefly. And one of those principles to understanding basically anything is cause and effect, is causality.
That there’s a relationship between something that affects or influences something and then the outcome. God wants us to understand that. Look at Acts 14, please.
Why is this so important? Well, when Paul was dealing with worldly people and the intelligentsia of his day, he brought it right back to nature to begin a common ground building block of relating Acts 14 in verse 15. Paul and Barnabas are preaching and teaching the Word. They bring deliverance to people and the people go the wrong way in their response.
They were trying to make sacrifices to Paul and Barnabas as if they were gods and the apostles would have nothing of that. Verse 15. And saying, sirs, why do you need things? We also are men of like passions with you and preach unto you that you should turn from these vanities unto the living God, which made heaven and earth, Genesis 1, 1, and following, and the sea and all things that are therein.
What brings the people back to sobriety? He brings them back to the common sense, boundaries, limits, causes, and effects of nature, who in time pass suffered all nations to walk in their own ways. Nevertheless, he left not himself without witness. Well, what was the witness that God said for all mankind in that he did good and gave us rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness? It’s amazing how simple it really is.
Now, I know you know these things. I know that, but it’s got to go deep if we’re going to help people resist the erosion of the boundaries and the limits and the principles that God instituted for the benefit of mankind. Look at Acts 17.
Here, the apostle Paul is in Athens, and he’s amongst the brightest, most intellectual group there possible. And we’ll see how he brings nature up again as a starting point to help them reset boundaries and get back in touch as an illustration and a witness with the one who created it all. In Acts 17, in verse 21, for all the Athenians and strangers, those were people that just lived there, which were there, spent their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear something new.
It tells you a little bit about their motive. Their thirst for new knowledge is what united them. They didn’t want to know necessarily God.
Applying the Teaching in Daily Life
They just wanted more knowledge. Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars Hill and said, you men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you are too superstitious. For as I passed by and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription to the unknown God, whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you, God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwell if not in temples made with hands.
Once again, he brings back God’s witness of nature. Neither is worship with men’s hands as though he needed anything, seeing he giveth to all life and breath and all things. Air itself, the atmosphere, 78 percent nitrogen, 21 percent oxygen and trace elements after that, is enough of a witness.
He has given us life and has made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth and have determined the times before appointed and the bounds of their habitation. There’s limits to where man can go and what man can do. That’s right.
I know that throws some people into a tizzy fit. They can argue all they want to. If God sets a boundary, that’s it.
That they should seek the Lord if happily they might feel after him and find him though he be not far from every one of us. When we open our heart to God, we confess Jesus Lord, believe that God raised him from the dead. We open our heart to him in prayer.
He’s right there. For in him we live and move and have our being as certain also of your own prophets have said, for we are also his offspring. Mankind did not evolve on his own.
Mankind was formed, made, and created by God, male and female, because in that arrangement you can reproduce. Remember, that’s a category. Anything that can reproduce.
For as much then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead or God’s nature is like unto gold or silver or stone graven by art and man’s device. You got to get man out of the equation here. In the times of this ignorance, God winked at, but now commandeth all men everywhere to repent, because he hath appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man, and that man is Jesus Christ, whom he hath ordained, whereof he hath given assurance, the word assurance is faith.
It’s the only place translated assurance. He has given faith. He’s given the faith of Jesus Christ unto all men in that he hath raised him from the dead.
A Life Shaped by God’s Word
People can have the faith of Jesus Christ if they confess Jesus as Lord and believe that God raised him from the dead. So once again, we see the necessity of getting back to nature. I am not proposing that we run away from our homes and live in caves.
What I’m saying is that the principles, the very bedrock of relationships, all come from an understanding of what God sets in motion, and it’s an illustration for us everywhere. So the erosion of those physical and moral and spiritual boundaries is definitely calculated. It’s systematic, and it’s directed by the spiritual darkness of this world.
And I could go on and on about illustrations, but you can fill in the blank. You know your own illustration, because those boundaries are lines of demarcation that limit life, they limit authority, and they limit activity in all spheres. Man just can’t do whatever he wants and get no consequences.
It doesn’t work that way. You can say you can fly and jump off a cliff. You’re going to go splat.
End of story, no argument. See, without these boundaries, there is no accountability. That’s why relationships dissolve.
They become ineffective. You can’t navigate any type of relationship. It just becomes increasingly difficult, and typically chaos follows.
When lines of demarcation become blurry or obfuscated, any distortion can be introduced. And boundaries in life keep man safe and prospering. They’re by God’s design.
That’s why he says in Proverbs 22-28, remove not the ancient landmarks, borders. It applies to how we receive from God and how we can relate one to another and keep moving forward with his blessings through his grace and mercy. So that’s a little bit on resetting boundaries.
Thank you.
Key Takeaways
- And you start with nature, because one of the lessons of nature is it has limits to life, boundaries, if you will, and it has cause and effect.
- You know your own illustration, because those boundaries are lines of demarcation that limit life, they limit authority, and they limit activity in all spheres.
- It doesn’t really matter what they imagine, because there are certain scientifically proven limits and boundaries.
- Resetting the boundaries is so important because without these boundaries, there is no accountability, and there is very difficult navigation when it comes to any type of relationship of any kind.
- Because we must understand that there are principles in nature that God instituted, as we read briefly.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the main message of “Resetting Boundaries”?
Rev. Rico Magnelli examines “Resetting Boundaries” through Proverbs 22, Genesis 1, Jeremiah 1323, Matthew 627, showing how boundaries, nature, limits shape a believer’s relationship with God, daily choices, and service to others.
Which scriptures are central to this teaching?
The teaching draws especially from Proverbs 22, Genesis 1, Jeremiah 1323, Matthew 627, Acts 14.
How can believers apply this teaching?
Because we must understand that there are principles in nature that God instituted, as we read briefly.
Scripture References
Proverbs 22; Genesis 1; Jeremiah 1323; Matthew 627; Acts 14; Acts 17
This text was prepared from the teaching audio or source document. Please verify scripture references against your own Bible.
