07-28-13 That I May Know Him Pt. 4 Evil Within

Phil. 3:8 More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish in order that I may gain Christ...

that I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death...

This is our forth week

on that one phrase “that I may know Him”.

And before I say another word

let me tell you right up front

that what we will do today is essential,

but it will probably frustrate you a bit

because we will look at the problem

and then look at the most common wrong answers to that problem,

but we will not have time to look at God’s alternative

until next week.

Last week we stopped half way through a thought,

and I want us to pick up where we left off.

Some of you were not here last week,

and all of us have just gone through

seven days of real life

that have driven our minds

and our emotions

miles away from where we were last Sunday,

so a little review will help us

get back into our study.

We began last week

by talking about the connection

between our attitude toward ourselves

and our attitude toward our Creator.

I suggested that

it is impossible for us to like God

any more than we like ourselves.

The degree to which we experience

true peace with God

is determined by the degree to which

we experience true peace with ourselves.

God is both our Creator

and our Redeemer.

If we find ourselves displeased

either with the way in which

He has created us

or with the way He has handled

our whole process of deliverance from evil

or the effects of evil in our lives,

it’s going to be very hard

for us to like Him

or to trust Him.

In other words,

if we look at ourselves

and find ourselves feeling like God goofed,

or feeling like He doesn’t care,

it will have a devastating impact

on our relationship with Him.

Then, last week I also suggested

that there are at least three great forces

used by Satan

to keep us from finding peace with ourselves.

1. The first is our preconceived idea

of who we think we are.

2. The second is our preconceived idea

of who we think we should be.

3. And the last are the lies we believe

about the way God views

both our sinful impulses

and the effects of sin in our lives.

Last week we spent our time

talking about 1 and 2 on that list.

We saw that God’s first step

in bringing us to a place of peace with ourselves

is His bringing us to an accurate understanding of who we are.

That means guiding us through

the maze of lies we have believed

about ourselves -

restoring to us a true sense of value

and dignity,

bring us an awareness

of our eternal importance

and significance,

a discovery that is rooted in our growing discovery

that we have eternal value and great significance to our God.

It also means our gaining

accurate and realistic expectations

of who God wants us to be.

It’s sometimes hard for us to realize

that religion is one of Satan’s

two most powerful tools

in his attack against

a healthy Christian walk.

The second is immorality,

but immorality is often far easier to war against

because it’s far easier to see it for the evil it is

and to see its destructive effects in our lives and the lives of others.

But religion, like nothing else in human experience,

has the power to subtly, powerfully suck true freedom

out of our lives

because it keeps our eyes forever focused on our external performance,

on the list,

and through the list on what the group thinks,

and how they respond to us

and whether or not what we said

or what we did

impressed them

or made us look good.

And in the end all true personal identity - the freedom to be the unique people we were designed to be,

is sacrificed to our driving need

for the affirmation

and approval

and acceptance

of the group around us

or the authority figures within our chosen religious structure.

Christ alone can break the power of religion

and bring us into true personal freedom,

and He does it

by giving us the calling

and the courage

to take our eyes

off of those around us

and turn them onto Christ alone.

He alone can offer us

a new point of focus - Himself.

In His gentle, yet powerful way

He seeks to take our eyes off

those around us -

what they say, what they think about us,

and He takes our eyes off ourselves

and our intense, minute scrutiny

of every flaw,

and every weakness,

and every strength.

He assures us

that there is only one audience

we need to be concerned with,

and that audience is Himself.

He alone can give us

the kind of personal permission we long for

to be the unique individuals

He designed each of us to be.

I love Paul’s comments

to the Corinthian Christians

in I Corinthians chapters 3 and 4.

The Corinthians were up to their ears in religious games,

playing show-and-tell with their spiritual gifts,

trying so hard to impress their fellow believers,

while all the time they were being driven by their own arrogance

and fleshly desires.

I find it fascinating

that the one New Testament church

that was the most overtly “Spirit-filled”,

displaying the greatest manifestation

of spiritual gifts,

was also the New Testament Church

that was the most overtly carnal,

and flesh-driven,

and ego-motivated,

and sin-infested.

They were busy playing church games,

while at the same time

shattering their relationships with one another.

Paul blasted them in I Corinthians 3 by saying,

1 Cor. 3:1 And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual men, but as to men of flesh, as to infants in Christ.

1 Cor. 3:2 I gave you milk to drink, not solid food; for you were not yet able to receive it. Indeed, even now you are not yet able,

1 Cor. 3:3 for you are still fleshly. For since there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not fleshly, and are you not walking like mere men?

They even got to the place

where they decided that the Apostle Paul didn’t quite measure up to their standard

or their expectations.

Paul responded to their childish arrogance

by saying simply,

1 Cor. 4:3 But to me it is a very small thing that I may be examined by you, or by any human court; in fact, I do not even examine myself.

1 Cor. 4:4 For I am conscious of nothing against myself, yet I am not by this acquitted; but the one who examines me is the Lord.

1 Cor. 4:5 Therefore do not go on passing judgment before the time, but wait until the Lord comes who will both bring to light the things hidden in the darkness and disclose the motives of men's hearts; and then each man's praise will come to him from God.

You see what he’s saying, don’t you.

He says, “You’re playing to the wrong audience.

You’re so busy looking at yourself

and at one another,

when the only One who can give you the affirmation you long for

is your Lord Jesus Christ.”

So, when Christ begins His healing process within us,

bringing us into a true sense of personal freedom,

He begins that process

by bringing us to an honest perspective

both on who we are,

and on who He designed us to be.

Let me simplify it in two statements.

He seeks to bring us to the place

where we can hear Him saying 2 things:

1. “My child, this is who you are by My design.”

2. “And it is a very good design indeed!”

Which brings us to the 3^rd great barrier

to that place of peace -

our ongoing battles with evil within us.

Because, you see,

with many of us it is not God’s basic design of us

that we find so hard to accept,

it is what we have done with that design.

We can accept in theory

that who we might have been

had we not mucked things up so badly

might have been really nice,

just as we can accept that

the physical world was a perfect, flawless place in which to live

before man and man’s sin started messing it up.

But the real problem is not with

what or who we might have been,

but rather with who we have made ourselves into.

And let me tell you the voice you’ll hear.

It will say,

“Oh sure, you could have done great things,

you could have been

a tremendous testimony

to the creative and redemptive work of God.

But, quite honestly,

through you’re lack of self-discipline

and continued vulnerability

to all sorts of temptations,

you’ve made

such a disastrous mess of your life

that you’re really a rather pathetic failure.”

Every honest Christian who has ever lived

has had to face

the reality of evil within himself or herself

at some point in their walk with God.

I can remember well

the first time I ever felt an utter sense of horror.

I was in Jr. High School at the time,

living in the north end of Seattle.

A family who lived in one of the oldest houses in the area

had asked me to stay with their 3 children

while they went out for the night.

They had no television,

so I bought myself a Popular Science magazine (my favorite at the time),

one of the great big $.10 candy bars,

and a can of soda

so that I had something fun to look forward to

once the children were in bed.

The children went to bed about 8:00 PM.

All three of them slept on mattresses that were laid on the floor

in the room just off the kitchen.

There were no bed frames or box springs of any kind,

just three children laying about 4 inches above the floor.

I settled down in the living room

to eat my treat and read my magazine.

The house was absolutely quiet

except for the breathing of the children

in the next room.

Then suddenly I heard a strange noise

coming from the kitchen.

I looked up from where I was sitting in the living room

and watched as four or five huge wharf rats

crawled out from a hole under the kitchen sink.

Two of them were already scurrying around the kitchen floor

looking for food,

while a third was heading into the children’s bedroom.

OK, trust me, I am not exaggerating when I tell you

that these things were as big as a good sized cat.

I have no way of putting into words

the emotion I felt at that moment.

It was a combination of terror,

shock,

revulsion,

and horror.

Fortunately, as soon as those rats

heard me jumping up and down

and saw this terrified Jr. High kid pounding on the floor

they retreated back under the sink.

Once they were all back in their nest

I started wadding up newspaper

and tossing the wads at the hole they’d come out of.

When I had a bunch of wads around the front of the hole

I took a kitchen chair,

grabbed it by the back legs,

and used it to heard the paper wads into the hole

and then I crammed the chair up against the paper to hold it in place.

I never said a word to the people about their rats when they came home,

but I think they must have wondered

why one of their kitchen chairs was laying on its back

crammed up under their sink.

I share that with you this morning

because, depending upon what we have been led to expect in the Christian life,

I think it is not uncommon

for many Christians to feel a very similar emotion

when they first discover

the continued presence of evil within themselves

following their submission to Christ.

When we come to Christ

He truly does recreate us

into a new, holy creation at the heart level.

We discover within us

a love for God

and a hunger for righteousness

unlike anything we had ever experienced before.

And this right here

is one of the many places

where the child of God is utterly unique in all the world.

While the rest of our world

is very busy getting rid of the whole concept of personal evil,

telling themselves and one another

that there are no moral absolutes,

and it’s all just a matter of personal choices

and personal preferences,

trusting the inner light within yourself

to guide you into truth, and wisdom, and productive living,

our God wants His people truly free,

free from the hideous destructive power

that sin has to disrupt and corrupt our lives

and rob us of the true freedom to be the people He designed us to be.

And a huge first step in that process

is His giving us a heart hunger and thirst

for a truly righteous life.

That is part of what

the presence of the Holy Spirit

accomplishes within the child of God.

It is easy at that point

for us to believe that all past evil

has been removed or subdued forever.

But the day will come

when we glance into the kitchen

and suddenly see our own personal rats

crawling out from under the sink.

How we view those rats,

and how we relate to them

will ultimately determine

the course of our Christian life from then on.

I am aware of at least 3 common

and highly destructive

incorrect responses

to those rats.

1. The first one I would mention

is to deny that the rats really exist.

This particular approach

often boldly proclaims

what appears to be a strong affirmation of truth and faith.

The Christian will say to himself or herself

and to others,

“I am a new creation in Christ,

the old things have passed away,

all things have become new.

I know it looked like there were rats

out there in the kitchen,

but it wasn’t true.

It can’t be true, therefore it isn’t.

Everything is just fine with me

because I’m a new creation in Christ.”

This “faith” approach

has the appearance of

the bold affirmation of truth

and confidence in Christ

and the truth of His Word.

The problem is that

when we deny the existence of the evil within us

we also slam the door

on the healing program Christ offers us that can bring us true freedom

from the power of that evil in our lives.

We will either develop a thick protective shell around our emotions

that keeps everything packed tight inside,

making us insensitive both to ourselves

and to those around us,

or we will reach a point

where we can no longer keep the evil

crammed down inside

and it will explode and consume our life.

And of course when others approach us and ask us for help

with their own struggles against evil in their life

we will have no answers for them because we have none for ourselves.

2. Then there are those Christians

who handle the evil

by proclaiming to themselves

and to others that it doesn’t really matter.

A few rats running around the kitchen

helps keep the floor clean.

The death of Christ paid the price

for all my sin,

and now my actions, my behavior just doesn’t matter.

In fact, it helps me to fit into the culture in which I live.

It gives me access to the lives of others

because my life looks just like theirs

and they’re not afraid to let me in.

And besides, it’s a bold affirmation to the world

that I live by grace and I’m no longer under the law.

All my God cares about is that I find what I think works best in my own life

and then go with it.

Paul talks about the stupidity of this thinking in Romans chapter 6.

Rom. 6:15 What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? May it never be!

Rom. 6:16 Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness?

He states the obvious -

sin produces slavery in the life of the Christian

every bit as much as it does

in the life of the non-Christian.

To proclaim that the evil doesn’t matter

is to live forever in the slavery

and bondage it brings into your life.

And with this approach we actually turn the control of our life

over to the evil within us - the bitterness, or the lust, or the greed,

and allow that evil

to become the driving force in our life,

giving it permission to literally determine the course of our future.

We never find true freedom of spirit for ourselves,

and the evil we’ve given reign to in our own life

corrupts and wounds the lives of all those who get close to us.

They suffer because of our corruption.

3. The third wrong answer

to the rats in the kitchen

is to believe that those rats

really tell the truth

about who we still are.

“Obviously nothing really changed

when I came to Christ.

I am still the same old person

with the same old sins

and the same old bondage.

I thought there was hope in Christ,

but obviously I was wrong.”

And in so doing,

rather than listening to our God

about our true identity in Him,

we allow the evil

to become the voice

that defines who we believe ourselves to be.

And, of course, we never find freedom

from the evil within.

Those are the wrong answers,

the ones that can never heal the wounds within us

or break the power of the evil that continues dwell within the child of God.

Next week

we’ll look at Christ’s alternative.