I love a talk that gets you all fired up. When a speaker inspires me, I feel as if I
can conquer the world. But the day after
the talk, I don’t feel that nearly so much.
Do you know what I mean?
God promises a future where the world is remade, where we are remade. And that remaking for us begins right now. God can empower you
to live in peace and hope right in the present moment. But even when you and I know that, we still
have a big question to answer.
How? How do you get that
power? Yes, it begins with
believing that Jesus died for you; that Jesus defeated death for you. But let’s be honest, lots of folks believe
that, but you may not see a lot of change in their lives. Heck, you might believe it, yet you still
struggle with things that you wish you didn’t, that you want to overcome. Why can’t you?
A century ago, the philosopher Nietzche gave
Christians a pretty harsh critique, and his words still hold painfully
true. He said. “Christians should look more redeemed”…more
changed in other words. So how does the
future that God has for you, change your life right now? In these words, God shows us the way. Let’s listen and hear what God has to say.
So how does God’s future change you right now? How does God’s gift in Jesus empower you to
overcome what holds you back today? To
understand that, you first need to understand the powerful forces that do hold
you back. Only then can you understand
not only how Jesus literally frees you, but how you make that freedom effective
in your own life.
So what are the forces that hold you back? Right near the end of what you just heard,
God tells you. Paul writes. “Therefore, do not let sin exercise dominion
in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions.” Now to grasp why human beings, even
Christians, struggle with change, we need to understand two key words here, sin
and passions. First, let’s make it
clear. Sin isn’t simply some checklist
of do’s and don’t’s. It goes way
deeper. Sin includes anything, even good
things in our lives that draw you away from loving God and loving others. So how can a good thing draw you away from
God? That’s where that other word,
passions comes in. Passion comes
closest in English to what Paul was telling us here, but to get this, to really
get, we need to understand the Greek word used here, epithumia. This word basically means an overriding,
super intense desire, an epic desire, in other words. And when you and I move away from loving God
and loving others, always at the center of that moving away is an epic desire,
a desire that is way beyond what it needs to be.
And every human being has epic desires that lead
them away. It can be anything, career;
family; achievement; personal independence; need to have others dependent on
you; power; influence; human approval; a
political cause; romance; physical attractiveness, even religion. Now all of these desires could be good. What makes them bad, what makes them sin is
when they go epic, when they go out of control, when they become ultimate
desires.
And how can you know a desire, even a good desire,
has gone epic. Here are four ways to find out.
First, if something blocks you from getting a good
thing, sure you get angry. But when
something blocks you from a thing you epically desire, you don’t just get
angry, you get epically angry. You lose
control. You say things that later you
wonder why you said it. You carry
bitterness, sometimes for years. Are you
having trouble forgiving someone? At the
root of that lies an epic desire guaranteed.
Or, if something good in your life gets threatened,
you get worried. But if something
ultimate, something you epically desire gets threatened, you get epically
worried. The fear paralyzes you. Your anxiety goes out of control. You know it’s too much, yet you can’t stop
being driven by fear and worry over it.
Or, if you lose something good, you grieve. You weep.
It’s terrible. It may take months
to get over it. If you lose something
that is ultimate, that is an epic desire, you want to throw yourself off a
bridge. You can’t find meaning in life
without it.
Or, if something in your life has gotten out of
control, and you resolve to stop it, yet you can’t. Your desire for it has become that epic, that
intense, that ultimate that you don’t even know how to function without meeting
it.
Do you see the power that such desires have? You don’t have an epic desire. An epic desire has you. That’s why in the next verses, Paul compares
it to slavery. These desires own
you. And here is the stunning truth, if
you don’t have an epic desire for God, then guaranteed you have an epic desire
for something. Everyone does As the writer David Foster Wallace put
it.
In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such
thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody
worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason, Wallace (a
non-Christian said) for choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to
worship…is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. But Wallace didn’t stop there. He pointed out that “the insidious thing
about these forms of worship is that they’re unconscious.” In other words, people go around driven by
epic desires that are eating away at their lives, and they don’t even know it. They are bowing down to false gods, worshipping
them, and have no clue they’re doing it at all.
If you have an eating disorder, you are worshiping the idol of
thinness. If you are a workaholic, you
could be worshiping any number of things, success, money, approval, but
whatever it is, it owns you, whether you admit it or not. If you are in a relationship and everyone
know it’s bad for you, but you can’t get out, you are worshiping the idol of
male or female affection. You can’t
imagine not being with someone.
Everyone has a spiritual master.
You think that’s not you, that you are in control but you’re not. If God
is not leading your life, then guaranteed you aren’t leading it. Something else is, some epic desire or
desires have you. What you need to do
is figure out what those are for you.
So how do you get free from these epic desires? First, you need to understand just what
Jesus has given you. And right at the
beginning of this passage, Paul shows you exactly that. Paul says. You have been united with Jesus not
only in his death, but in his resurrection.
What does that mean?
It means first that everything that Jesus has done now belongs to
you. It’s like if you marry someone who
is rich, what happens to you? You become
rich. And when Jesus unites with you,
all your mistakes and failings disappear, and all of Jesus’ righteousness and
goodness becomes yours. It is as if you
died on that cross for your sins. But
not only do you share in his death, you share in his resurrection. You don’t just get Jesus’ past. You get Jesus’ future.
In the Bible, in only two places you will find this fascinating
Greek word, palingenesia. They Stoic
philosophers created it to describe their concept of the continual rebirth of
the cosmos. They believed that the world
went into decay until the Creator purged it, and out of the purging recreated
it once again, and that this cycle goes on without end. But in Matthew 19, Jesus uses that very word
to describe something quite different.
Jesus says: “Truly I tell you, at the renewal of all things,
(the palingenesia) when the Son of Man is seated on the throne of his glory…
everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or
children or fields, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold, and will inherit eternal life.” Jesus is saying. “Yes, there will be a palingenesia, a
rebirth, a new heavens and a new earth, but it is only happening once.” Jesus is talking here about what we saw in
Revelation last week.
But
the Bible uses that same word in a very different place. In Titus 3, Paul writes: “Jesus saved us, not because of any works of
righteousness that we had done, but according to his mercy, through the water of rebirth
and renewal by the Holy Spirit.” Do you
know what that word rebirth there is?
It’s palingenesia. But that
makes no sense. Palingenesia refers to
the rebirth of the universe not the renewal of one person. But Paul knows that. So why does he use it? He is telling us that the same power that is
moving even now to bring a new heavens and new earth, that same power, when you
believe in Jesus, lives in you right now.
The same power that will remake
the universe lives in you now.
So if you have become a
follower of Jesus, and you still struggle to change, then you simply haven’t
accessed the power that Jesus has given you.
But how do you access this power?
It begins with simply affirming that it has happened, that as Paul puts
it here, your old self has died, that it died with Jesus on that cross.
The great Christian
thinker, St. Augustine, before he became a believer had serious issues with
sexual self-control. In other words, he
slept around a lot. One day, after his conversion, one of his old
girlfriends recognizes him, and propositions him. But Augustine, politely but firmly says. “No
thank you.” She is stunned, so stunned
she thinks that Augustine must not recognize me. So she says.
“Augustine, it is I.” What does
Augustine say? He says, “I know but it is not I.” Augustine is telling her. “I’m no longer that guy, who needed to sleep
around to feel value or worth. That guy
is dead.” So when epic desires rise,
what do you do? You remind
yourself. “That self is dead, gone,
crucified with Jesus.”
But still, let’s be
honest, even with that, this process takes a while. Why does it take so long? Do you remember the story of the parting of
the Red Sea in the Moses story? God
parts the waters. The Israelites
escape. The Egyptian army is
destroyed. In that one awesome act God
delivers the Israelites out of slavery.
But they still spend 40 years in the desert before they are ready to
enter the land God promised them.
Why? God can take you out of slavery
in an instant, but it takes years for God to get the slavery out of you.
But ok, you might say I
get that. But why does it take so long
to get the slavery out? Because in your
heart of hearts, you don’t believe that Jesus really has the best for you. At the very beginning, that was the original
temptation in the garden. The serpent
said. You can’t trust this God, what He
tells you, what He wants you to do. And
we still struggle with that message. After
all, as enslaved as we are to our epic desires, we don’t feel that
enslaved. So to offer ourselves to God
without reservations feels so hard. So
we think, hey I can keep the illusion of independence even though I’m really
enslaved. Or I can go into something
that looks as if it will enslave me, but that actually sets me free. And you get scared. You back away. And how do you break free of this fear? You look at what God in Jesus has given for
you. You see the one who lost his
freedom so that you can be free forever.
You see the One who gave up power so that his power might live in you. You see the One who paid the ultimate price
to give you the ultimate freedom. And
you realize. Why would I not want to
offer myself to the only master who has already offered himself for me? Give yourself to anything else, it won’t die
for you. It’ll want you to die for
it. Or you can give yourself to the one
who has already died for you, who has even defeated death for you. For only there, will you find the perfect
freedom you yearn to have.
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