Addicted to Sin, or Dedicated to God

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful.  --Psalm 1:1

Sin is enticing, Boys.  You see her across the room pursing her ruby red lips.  You can't help but notice her.  She grabs your attention and makes you lose your train of thought.  While you are stammering, trying to remember what you were saying, Sin looks straight at you and smiles.  When she does, she takes your breath away.  You want to stop what you are doing, leave the people you were with, and go say hello.  It's all innocent, at first.  Sin offers you a taste, and you turn your head.  She teases you.  "I won't bite," she says.  You look back, and there she is, more desirable than before.  You look up, hoping to find courage to walk away, but suddenly everyone around you is encouraging you to stay with her.  Television ads feature close-up pictures of her.  Internet ads urge you to remain engaged with her.  Deep in the recesses of your memory a pastor or Bible teacher entreats you to leave her side and never go back.  But in the here and now, the voices in the World are louder than the voices in your mind, and all of them demand that you take her, make her yours.

Sin is attractive, Ladies.  He promises to take care of you, to make all of your troubles disappear.  He is strong, handsome, and resilient.  Sin offers security.  You can hide behind him and he will shield you from those who talk behind your back, or suddenly become quiet when you enter a room, not realizing that you see them exchange knowing glances.  Sin is your friend.  You could talk with him for hours.  You can cover him up when you visit your Mom, or when you go to Church.  Like make-up that hides blemishes and imperfections, it is easy enough to stay cool on the outside while raging with desire on the inside.  You can appear to play hard to get, but you and Sin both know that when you are alone together, he owns you.

Affinity leads to Affection, and Affection leads to Addiciton.

But his delight is in the Law of the Lord, and in His Law he meditates day and night.  --Psalm 1:2

In the worldly paradigm, you like someone or something.  Liking turns to loving, and love turns to lust.  You have an affinity for something unhealthy for you.  It catches your eye, and draws you in.  You may want it once in a while, and you justify yourself by saying, "It's only once in a while."  Like a treat, but you don't call it that, because that would be, like, ewww.  As time goes on, the affinity you have for something becomes an affection.  You just LOVE it, but you tell yourself you can't have it because it's bad for you.  You find yourself thinking about it more and more, imagining yourself with it.  Before long, however, the affection becomes an affair or an addiction.  You can't do without it.

In the first verse of Psalm 1, David describes a downward spiral.  First you walk.  It's okay to walk--we are encouraged in Scripture to walk.  We were made to move, to work, to do and accomplish.  The objective, however, is to walk in light of Scripture.  Failing that, we walk while listening to the World.  The World encourages us to broaden our horizons, to take chances, and to question authority. When we listen to the World, we find ourselves further and further from our Creator and our God.

The second action described in Psalm 1:1 is to stand.  Again, this is not a bad thing in itself.  Psalm 94:16 says, "Who will stand up for me against evildoers?  Who will take his stand for me against those who do wickedness?"  In the New Testament, Paul said in 1 Corinthians 16:13, "Be on your guard; stand firm in the faith; be courageous; be strong."  The antithesis to that is described in Psalm 1:1, when we stand with sinners.  It is all too easy to stand silent rather than stand up against a rising tide of sin.  Silence, taking the easy road, it complacency.  Complacency is being complicit with wrong ideas, wrong statements, wrong stands.  Doing nothing is tantamount to standing with the sinners.

The final straw in Psalm 1:1 is sitting in the seat of scoffers.  Now, there are times in the Bible where we are told to be still.  Psalm 1:3 says, "He shall be like a tree, planted by the rivers of water, that brings forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf also shall not wither; and whatever he does shall prosper."  Being planted in the right way is like participating in a sit-in for a worthy cause.  What verse 1 warns against is being planted, not in righteousness, but in scorn.  Making fun of someone, lobbing verbal grenades, calling them names, laughing at them, all for standing up and doing the right thing--this is not what we are called to do.  It is much better to engage someone in thoughtful conversation, defending your faith and countering their arguments, answering their questions thoughtfully after listening to them respectfully.  Just remember that being respectful does not necessarily mean agreeing with them.

It all boils down to this:  where does your devotion lie?  In what do you delight?  If you delight in sin, it can be a snare for you.  You may find yourself trapped in a sin, unable to find an off-ramp. Here is my advice:  go slow.

It is harder to exit a moving train when it is going 50 miles per hour than it is if the train is slowing to a stop.  In the same way, vowing to never do something again when it has become an addiction almost never works.  The obsession becomes overpowering, and you are more likely to slip back into that behavior.  Some people can quit cold-turkey, but most have to come down in steps.  It is much easier to back away from an addiction the same way yout approached it.  An affinity became an affection, and that affection became an addiction.  Realizing that you love something but that it is still bad for you allows you to step back gradually.  It is easier to stay sober one full day than it is for one full year.  It is easier to go one hour without a cigarette than it is to go an entire day.  Control your addiction by recognizing the affection but not giving in to the obsession.  If you fail, try again.  You will find yourself failing less and less often, and as time goes by, the affection or love you had for it is tamed.  The affection becomes an affinity, something that is desirable but avoidable.  It is at this point that you make your vow to never succomb to temptation again, and have a higher success rate.

Direction times Duration equals Dedication.

My wife and I have been married 27 years.  We committed ourselves to walk together, in more or less the same direction, way back in the 1980s.  The longer we walk together, the more dedicated we are to one another.  We have seen each other through rough patches, illnesses, and financial stresses, just like every other couple in the world.  We have stood up for each other.  We have stood toe to toe and fought against one another.  We have stood on our heads for our kids.  Today, I can honestly say we are dedicated to each other more than ever before.

I will tell you that it is much easier to be dedicated to my wife when I am dedicated to my God.  When I am like a tree, planted by the river of living water, then I can cover her and protect her, stand up for her and beside her, be strong for her and give her shade.  Those times that I have uprooted myself and tried to be happy in a lifeless desert, she has waited for me by the living water, praying to the Source that I would return to her.  Whenever she became more dedicated to our children, or to her job, or to something else more than to me, she was swept downstream. She found a need to repent, meaning to turn around and come back to where she was at the beginning. Praise God He always throws us a lifeline.

What are you dedicated to?  Are you going in the direction that God has pointed you?  Call to Him before it is too late, before your time expires.  We have seen a lot of tragedy in the news recently.  People are dying daily, some unexpectedly, some violently, some accidentally, but all without notice.  No one can tell the time or manner of their own death.  If you have been dedicated to the wrong thing for the duration of your life, I would encourage you to go to God.  Read His Word, and listen to His voice.  Don't enter into eternity going the wrong direction.

What Will You Do In The Valley?

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.  --Psalm 23:4

I will never leave you nor forsake you.  --Hebrews 13:5 

Thomas Aquinas said, "If the highest aim of a captain were to preserve his ship, he would keep it in port forever."  Life is a journey, and you must climb the mountains and you must abide in the valleys. The trick is not to dwell in the valley forever.

Today I want to look at two rather minor Bible characters (B-list saints, if you will) and see how they dealt with the valleys they found themselves in.  The first one is Gideon; the second is Jonathan.  You may remember Gideon as the man who asked God for a sign.  He put out the fleece (that is where this phrase comes from), and asked God to keep it dry for him when the morning dew wet the grass around it.  When God did that, Gideon wanted to make sure, so he put out the fleece again, asking God to make it wet with the morning dew, and leave the grass dry.  God did not shy away from Gideon's testing, but when you see the back-story, you will find that Gideon was quite shy in following God.

You might want to read Judges chapter 6 for the whole story, because I don't want to get bogged down in the details.  I do, however, want you to know where Gideon came from, and why he was so comfortable in the valley.  The story opens when Israel was enduring seven years of hardship at the hand of God.  Their enemies, the Midianites, were occupying their land, and not in a good way.  The Midianites burned the crops of the Israelites.  They would kill the Israelites' livestock.  The destruction of the Midianite invaders was compared to swarms of locusts; they invaded the land to ravage it.  After seven years of this, the Israelites finally called out to God for help.

A prophet of God started preaching a message of repentance to them.  This unnamed prophet reminded them of God's power in their history.  Had not God brought His people out of Egypt?  They were not slaves of the Egyptians, because God had delivered them out of slavery.  So why were they now subjecting themselves to Midian?  How were they placing themselves into subjection?  By worshiping the gods of the Midianites.  I want you to notice here that actions have consequences.  The people of Israel did not endear themselves to their enemies the Midianites by embracing their culture, or by appropriating their gods.  The Midianites did not look at them and say, "Any friend of Baal is a friend of ours.  If those people buy into the fertility goddess Asherah, they must be all right."  Worship of the fertility goddess included sexual promiscuity, because there were temple prostitutes that came with obedience to her.  Worship of Baal may have included human sacrifice.  These people were willing to sacrifice their children on the altar of Baal, but it did not appease the marauders from Midian.

God sent an angel to meet with Gideon.  I want us to pay attention to what he is doing.  He is threshing wheat, but not on a threshing floor.  Somehow, his family had been able to grow a crop without the invading armies knowing about it.  Now, normally, a threshing floor is positioned high on a hill or a ridge, because they relied on the wind to carry away the chaff when the grain was thrown into the air.  But Gideon was threshing wheat in a winepress.  An ancient winepress was a pit dug out of a rock; it looked much like a hole in the ground.  Why was Gideon threshing wheat in a winepress?  So that the Midianites would not see him there.  He was hiding his wheat so he could have some bread.  Times were tough.  Does any of this sound familiar?

When the angel approached Gideon, he paid him a compliment that, given the surroundings and the circumstances, could have been thought of as sarcasm.  "Hail, mighty man of valor.  The Lord is with you."  Gideon must have looked around at his circumstances and rolled his eyes.  "Yeah, right," he said. "If the Lord is with us, then why is all this happening to us?"

God's message to him was direct.  "Go in the strength you have, and save Israel out of Midian's hand.  I will go with you."  God did not ask him to do something he was not capable of doing.  Gideon did not have the excuse of not being strong enough.  Nevertheless, when he did obey, he took ten friends with him.  The first order of business was to knock down the monuments used in the worship of the idols.  There was a pole, or obelisk, erected for worshippers of Asherah to dance around.  God wanted him to knock it down.  There was an altar built for sacrifices to Baal. God wanted him to take it down and replace it with a proper altar, one built to honor God, and to sacrifice a bull on it.  Summoning all his strength, and his ten friends, Gideon set out to do what the Lord commanded.  But he was afraid of confrontation, so he went at night.

Is this how we obey God sometimes?  We want to be obedient, but we don't want to make waves, so we hide under the cover of darkness, hoping nobody sees us.  We go out in our own power, and not the power of God, so we try to get our friends to cover for us.  Imagine the finger-pointing that went on when this deed was discovered in the morning.  "He did it!"  The Israelite idol worshippers wanted to take Gideon and kill him.  God spared Gideon from the death penalty that the people demanded, because Gideon's dad challenged the men.  He said, "Is not Baal strong enough to take care of himself?"  Gideon saw that God was stronger than Asherah and Baal combined.  At the same time, Gideon did not have the faith to obey God later without asking for a sign.  He stayed in the valley, because that is where he was comfortable.

By contrast, I want us to look at an incident in Jonathan's life. You may remember Jonathan was Prince of Israel, the son of King Saul.  He was also very good friends with David, whom the Lord had anointed to succeed Saul on the throne.  You may want to look at 1 Samuel 14 as we examine this incident.

Saul and his army were encamped at a town called Gibeah, while the Philistine army had set up in a mountain pass called Micmash.  Any student of military history knows that when you pick a battleground, you want to have the high ground.  That way you can come down to your enemy and overtake them.  The Philistine army was on the mountain above the cliff surrounding the pass at Micmash.  Get the picture?

Things were very bleak for the Israelite army.  1 Samuel 13:16-22 says that the Philistines sent out raiding parties to attack Israel.  In fact, none of the Israelites had a sword or a spear.  The Philistines would not even let them have a blacksmith to make weapons.  For years, the farmers had to go to the Philistines and pay them to sharpen their plows and sickles.  Only Saul and his son Jonathan had spears.

Nevertheless, Jonathan says to his aide, "Let's go over to the Philistine camp."  The two of them did not tell anyone where they were going.  They went to the mountain pass at Micmash, in the road between two cliffs.  Don't you think they were vulnerable?  The Philistines could have rolled a large rock down the cliff and squished them both.  This didn't stop Jonathan.  His plan was to show himself to the Philistines and see what their response would be.  If they said, "Wait there, we'll come and fight you in the valley," then Jonathan was willing to stand his ground.  If they said, "Come up to us and fight", then Jonathan was willing to do that, too.  "Perhaps the Lord will act in our behalf.  Nothing can hinder the Lord from saving, whether by many or by few." (1 Samuel 14:6).

Sure enough, Jonathan and his aide got the attention of the Philistines on the high ground.  I can imagine them yelling catcalls:  "Nyah, nyah, you can't catch us!  We're on the Lord's side."  The Philistines shouted down into the valley, "Come up to us and we'll teach you a lesson."  To their utter surprise, Jonathan climbed up the cliff, crawling on his hands and feet, with his aide close behind.  Once they got up to the top, they engaged the Philistines in hand-to-hand combat, and they killed about 20 of them.

The rest of the Philstines panicked, and started running.  The Bible says the ground shook--I don't know if it was an earthquake sent by God, or if the ground shook from the Philistine army beating feet to get away.  The rest of the Israelite army saw what was going on, and went to catch up with Jonathan.  When they got there, the Philistines were in such confusion that they were fighting each other.  Hebrew prisoners that had been taken captive during the Philistine raids found themselves freed, and they picked up weapons that were left behind and chased the Philistines with the rest of the army of God.

There was a Texas Ranger in the late 1800s that was so tough, it was said that he would "charge hell with a bucket of water."  That may sound fool-hardy to us.  To Jonathan, who had the same attitude, it meant that God was bigger than the valley he was in at the moment.  He was willing to climb out of that valley and engage in battle with an enemy that outnumbered him.  He was tired, outmanned, and outgunned, but with God's help, he drove the enemy out.

Friend, what will you do in your valley?  Will you be like Gideon, hesitant, afraid, and leaving yourself an out?  Or will you be like Jonathan, who put himself in harms way, vulnerable yet victorious when he went out in the name of the Lord his God?

Artifice: The Artful Dodger and Artificial Affinity

 

The idols speak deceit, diviners seek visions that lie; they tell dreams that are false, they give comfort in vain.  Therefore the people wander like sheep oppressed for lack of a shepherd.  --Zechariah 10:2-3

But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.  --Hebrews 5:14

Questions for your consideration:

• Why did God command us not to lie?
• Why did God command us not to steal?
• Why did God command us to be faithful?
• Why did God command us to love Him with all our heart, soul, mind and strength?

Let's come back to those questions later.  For now, I want to discuss a word that you may not use in normal conversation:  artifice.  It's a word that means "clever or cunning devices or expedients, especially as used to trick or deceive others; as in, 'artifice and outright fakery'."  Some synonyms include trickery, deceit, deception, guile, cunning, and chicanery.

This word "artifice" has a very negative connotation.

During this election season in the U.S., many of us have had our fill of artifice and deceit.  One candidate accuses the other of guile, and the other accuses the first of trickery.  Politics is built on deception--who you think tells the fewest lies gets your vote, but no one in her right mind would expect all promises made during a campaign to be kept.

Examples of artifice are abundant in life, not just in politics.  In Charles Dickens' classic book Oliver Twist, one of the characters is nicknamed "The Artful Dodger".  This character is a pickpocket, who is very good at what he does.  He is described as a child who acts like an adult.  What a sad commentary on the so-called mature people in Dickens' culture.  "The Artful" wore clothes that we much too big for him.  How many adults take on burdens that are too big for them to handle?  "Dodger" was said to seldom give in to childish urges.  We all know adults who never laugh, and are much too serious for their own good.  This character had great respect for his mentor Fagin, and brought to him all the spoils of his work.  Men always work for someone greater than themselves, and at the end will present their works to God, or to Satan--wanting praise and approval from one or the other.

None of us will openly admit to artifice in our lives.  We believe it should be shunned.  Banned.  Done away with.

Interestingly enough, there is another word derived from "artifice" that is embraced, loved, and held in high esteem.  That word is "Artificial."  Admit it:  We use artificial sweetener; we play on artificial turf; we have children by artificial insemination.  We hold back the seas with artificial beaches.  We decorate our homes with artificial flowers.  We extend our lives with artificial heart valves.  We run the race with artificial limbs.

Face it:  we not only tolerate the artificial--we sanction it.  The danger is when the artificial creeps into the spiritual.  There is nothing genuine about our national spirituality any more.  We have gone from a Christian nation to one that says, "it doesn't matter what you believe, as long as you are sincere," all the way to "what's true for you is not necessarily true for me."  I fear there are many that self-identify as Christians, but don't have the slightest idea of who Jesus is, or what He commanded of us.  "He who loves me will keep my commandments." (John 14:15).

These are the people about whom Jesus said, 'Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you workers of lawlessness.’ (Matthew 7:21-23)

When I was in counseling just before remarrying the wife who had divorced me a year earlier, my counselor would always encourage me to be genuine and authentic.  I confess I didn't know what he meant.  Now, more than ten years later, I am learning.  We need to put away the artificial.  We need to shun artifice in all its forms.

God created us to have fellowship with Himself.  We allowed sin to drive a wedge between us and Him.  He provided a way for us to receive forgiveness for sin, to restore fellowship with us again.  He gave us the capacity to be like Him.  Which brings us full circle to the questions posed at the beginning of this post.

Why did God command us not to lie?  Because He never lied to us.  He gave us the capacity to be truthful.  Why did God command us not to steal?  Because He has never stolen from us.  He gave us the capacity to be honest.  Why did God command us to be faithful?  Because He is faithful.  He has given us the capacity to be faithful, both to Him, and to others.  He created us all with the capacity for these things, even before we know Him.  Even people who do not know Him can tell the truth, can be honest, and not cheat on their wives.

Most important than any of those, however, is this: why did God command us to love Him with all our heart, soul, mind and strength?  Because that is how He loves us.  He has given us the capacity to love Him and to love one another.  This command is only possible by and through the Spirit of God within us.  We cannot possibly love anybody, least of all God, with all our heart, soul, mind and strength without His Holy Spirit within us.  When we give our whole heart to Him, however, He begins to re-create us in His image.  He begins to re-make us for His purpose.  He begins to re-work us for His good pleasure.  "Be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.  Then you will be able to discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God." (Romans 12:2).

Trade in your artifice for the artifact that God created you to be.