©2004 Larry Huntsperger Peninsula Bible Fellowship

10/17/04

Thou Shalt Not Be Lonely

10/17/04 Thou Shalt Not Be Lonely

For a number of weeks, now,

we have been looking at the moral commandments

given to us by our Creator,

in an attempt to better understand

how they fit into our lives as Christians.

Along the way

we’ve seen the three distinct phases

that the Spirit of God seeks to lead us through

in our relationship with those commandments.

In the first phase

we view the commandments

as unreasonable,

unattainable,

even hostile demands being made upon us by our Creator.

Our rebellious spirits resent and resist the inflexible “THOU SHALT NOT!”,

and yet, because these moral absolutes

are etched within us in the form of our conscience by God Himself,

we cannot escape them.

It is during this first phase

that God uses His moral commands

to incite our spirits into rebellion,

using His moral law to cause us to sin more.

Paul says simply,

ROM 7:5 For while we were in the flesh, the sinful passions, which were aroused by the Law, were at work in the members of our body to bear fruit for death.

“Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do!

I’ll do whatever I choose to do.

I did it MY way!”

And we do.

And the results in our lives are devastating,

intensifying our pain,

increasing our stress,

complicating our lives,

enslaving us to physical, emotional, and psychological addictions

that drive and dominate our lives.

And all of this is brought about within us

by the God who loves us so much

that He chose to die in our place for our sins

so that we could be reunited with Him.

He does it

because He needed a spotlight

with which to illuminate the real problem in our lives -

not our actions,

but our inner spirit of rebellion against our God from which all the actions flow.

From there,

if we will turn to our God

and cry out to Him for help,

we move into the second phase in our relationship to His moral law.

It is a short phase,

but an essential one

for all those who ultimately find true, eternal freedom in Christ.

It is the phase in which God takes His moral law,

sets it next to our own lives,

and shows us how far short we fall.

In phase one the law drives us into sin.

In phase two it then condemns us on the basis of that sin.

Then, and only then are we finally ready

to hear and understand

what our God is saying to us about Jesus Christ.

COL 2:13-14 When you were dead in your transgressions ...He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions, having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.

Not until the moral commandments of God

have forever lost the power to condemn us,

not until they have been removed from us

as the foundation upon which we relate to our Creator

and are replaced by the Person of Jesus Christ,

only then can we,

for the first time in our lives,

move into the third phase in our relationship to those Commandments,

a phase in which we see the hidden treasure imbedded in them -

God’s revelation to us

of the true nature of love

and the way in which our deepest needs can be met.

Now, when we ended last week,

I mentioned to you

that I have recently seen something about these Commandments

that I’ve never seen in quite this way before.

And before we leave this study of the Commandments

I’d like try to put it into words to you.

To get to where I want us to go

it’s going to first involve a little review

of some things we’ve talked about frequently in the past.

But there is something happening with these commandments,

something absolutely remarkable,

and I do hope I can express it

in a way that will allow you to see it.

But first the review.

As a result of that disastrous affair that took place in the Garden of Eden a few years back

each of us now enter this world

with a spirit that is utterly and completely severed from our Creator, SELF centered.

We are our own personal god,

the center of our own little world.

Because we are created beings,

designed by Him

to live in submissive union to Him,

we are totally unqualified to be the center of our world.

But we assume the role, none the less.

As we might expect, this self-centered approach to life

brings with it a number of tragic consequences.

One of the many painful affects of those self-centered spirits within us

is the isolation of our spirits

both from God

and from one another.

That defiant human will within us is a truly remarkable thing.

It doesn’t grow and develop gradually within us.

We bring it fully developed into this world at birth,

and it remains strong right up until we take our last breath.

The instant that tiny baby enters this world,

long before he understands a single word

or is able to make any sense out of his surroundings,

he wants and expects every other human being

to meet his needs,

and to comply with his demands.

This past week

our grandson, Matty,

has decided he no longer likes his car seat.

Joni said that,

the instant she begins to put him in it

he starts to howl at the top of his voice.

He keeps it up all the way the store,

and then as soon as he’s taken out

he is once again instantly his cute, cooing, smiling, 9 month old self,

charming all of the clerks in the store,

until he is once again placed back into his car seat,

at which time he once again attempts to convince everyone within a half a mile

that he is the victim of hideous child abuse.

Now, where in the world did that little guy

learn that kind of wilful behavior?

He didn’t learn it anywhere.

It comes imbedded in every human spirit who enters this world.

And even if, through skillful parenting,

the child is trained to bring those wilful demands into socially acceptable boundaries,

apart from the direct intervention of God into his life,

that desire to rule his world remains intact as long as he lives.

And even at the end of our days,

even if many or most of our other mental and physical abilities have severely deteriorated,

the human will,

and the desire to have it OUR WAY remains completely intact,

because that will

is not a matter of the intellect,

it is a matter of the human spirit.

Look at this!

We now live in a society

in which we have collectively decided

that the greatest and highest social good

is the defense of every individual’s right

to live life any way he or she chooses to live

so long as we don’t infringe of someone else’s rights.

And we honestly view this as some huge step forward

in the social evolution of mankind.

But all we’ve done

is to take that self-centered will within each of us

and turn it into a social and cultural and political virtue.

And the very fact that this whole “rights of the individual” thing

sounds so good,

and so true,

and so correct to so many of us

simply emphasizes the depth of our blindness

to who we really are

and why we exist at all.

The truth is

as created beings

we do not and never have had the right to live any way we choose to live.

What we do have

is the right to live in submissive obedience

to the One who created us.

(But I’d like to see you try to get that “right” passed through congress.)

But my point here is simply this -

we each enter this world

with two huge forces going on within us,

forces that are in absolute conflict with one another.

On one side we have this human will within us

demanding the right to be our own god,

to keep ourselves as the center of our own world.

But on the other hand,

because we are formed in the image of God,

all of our deepest fulfillment and satisfaction in life

comes from the exchange of love

first between us and our Creator,

and second between ourselves and those around us.

And right here is the great trap,

the great tension-point of our lives -

our self-centered will

and our determination to rule our world

isolates us and drives those around us away.

And the more we succeed in our self-centeredness -

the more successful we are at manipulating,

and ruling,

and controlling others,

getting them to submit to our kingdom rule,

the more we succeed at what our spirit thinks it wants,

the more lonely,

and isolated we become.

We desperately hunger for love,

for some way to fill the aching void of loneliness within,

but that self-centeredness of spirit

and that determination to keep ourselves at the center of our world

destroys our ability both to respond to God’s love

and to reach out in love to others.

Now, with that as background, here’s what I want us to see.

One of the truly remarkable things the Commandments do

is to show us the way back to love

by calling us to replace our natural self-centeredness

with choices that place the needs and desires of others above our own.

And in the process

we begin to discover the kind of love relationships we so desperately hunger for.

You see, left to ourselves,

our basic self-centeredness causes us to get it all wrong.

We live in a world filled with self-centered people

who are desperately trying to get those around them

to give them the things they think they need

so that they can then at last be happy.

But no matter how much we get,

or no matter how much we control and manipulate others,

or no matter how much we win,

it’s never enough

because getting from others,

and controlling others,

and conquering others can never meet the love needs within us.

It is only when we reach out to those entrusted into our care

and give to them

rather than taking from them

that we find our own spirits being fed, and filled, and satisfied.

There is a fascinating statement made by Paul to the elders at Ephesus,

recorded for us in Acts 20:35.

I find it fascinating in part

because it is a statement

that we never find recorded in the gospels,

which means that throughout that first century

there were still many within the church

who had heard and remembered and then quoted

things that our Lord said while He was here,

things that were never written down,

and are now lost to us forever.

We have all we need, of course, in the Gospels

for what God wants us to know about Christ,

but statements like this just make me curious to know how much more they knew

that we do not.

But in this particular quote Paul says,

“... and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, that He Himself said, 'It is more blessed to give than to receive.”

Now, our naturally distorted religious natures

take that statement

and turn it into a little platitude,

a statement of religious duty telling us that we really should give to others

because in so doing it will bless them.

But that’s not what He’s saying.

He is telling us

that true blessing,

true fulfillment and satisfaction comes to us

not when we get what we think we want from others,

but when we give to them what we know they need.

And when we see the Commandments correctly,

that is exactly what they teach us how to do.

For, at the heart of every one of the commandments,

we find our God showing us

how to set limits on ourselves and our own self-centeredness for the sake of others,

and in the process

we discover our own love needs are met.

When my daughter, Joni, was in her early grade-school years,

she and I went on a car ride at Disneyland.

Each little car had a steering wheel that really turned the car

and determined where it would go.

But, running down the middle of this curving driving course we were on,

there was a rigid steel rail that the car straddled.

And every time the little car

would head too far in a wrong direction

the front wheel on either the left or the right

would hit that rail

and it would push us back onto the road again.

I let Joni drive, of course,

because I knew that, with that rail,

there was no way we could get ourselves into any trouble.

When we come to Christ,

our spirits truly are reborn,

recreated in righteousness.

And, if they were given perfect leadership of our lives,

we would relate perfectly both to our God and to every other person we meet.

But in reality,

because our minds still begin every action, every response

on the basis of reasoning processes that were established within us

by that old self-centered spirit we brought with us into this world,

we frequently point our little cars

in some direction that will be destructive to us and to others

if we follow through with it.

The moral Commandments of God

are the steel rails that brings us back to safety.

But the thing that really hit me here

is the realization that every one of the commandments

forces us to limit our natural selfish, self-centered impulses,

and when they do,

it results in our getting

not what our flesh thought we needed,

but rather what our spirits truly longed for.

The Commandments force us to sacrifice selfishness

for the sake of building true love relationships with those around us.

Let me show what I mean.

With some of the commandments it’s obvious.

You shall not murder.

You shall not steal.

You shall not covet.

You shall not lie.

The little boy,

walking home from school,

passes his friend’s house

and sees that awesome skateboard in the yard.

His spirit assures him

that, because he is the most important person in his world,

that skateboard really should be his.

And so he steals it.

He gets what he wants,

but he can no longer invite his friend over to play

for fear his friend might see the stolen board,

and, of course,

there’s no way the two of them can ever go skateboarding together again.

And what he doesn’t realize

is that, when God said, “Don’t steal”,

what He was really saying is,

“What your spirit truly hungers for

is not a new skateboard.

What your spirit hungers for is a good friend.

When I tell you not to lie,

or to steal,

or to covet,

I am simply showing you

how to limit those self-centered impulses within you

so that you can find the love your spirit truly hungers for.

And exactly the same principle applies

whether we’re talking about a ten year old boy stealing a skateboard,

or a 60 year old business man

stealing from his boss,

or cheating his client.

What we gain

can never even begin to replace

what we lose in the process.

God says to us, “You shall not commit adultery”.

But we say to ourselves,

“Because I am the center of the world,

and because I don’t believe you are meeting my physical,

and emotional,

and sexual needs the way I think they should be met,

I believe I’ll just toss these wedding vows away

and find someone

who will give me what I think I deserve.”

And what we don’t realize until it’s too late

is that our God was not trying to wall us off from what we need,

He was trying to protect us,

and guard us,

and deliver us from the pain of watching our actions

destroy our mate,

and corrupt and confuse our relationship with our children,

and profoundly complicate every relationship that matters most to us for the rest of our lives.

And with every Commandment given to us by our God,

we see Him revealing to us

how we can choose to put limits on our selfishness

for the sake of gaining the love our spirits hunger for more than all else.