 |
||
BY
GLENN PEASE
CHAPTER
1.PARADOXICAL PARTNERS BASED ON ROM. 12:9
CHAPTER 2.WHEN
OPPOSITES ARE THE SAME BASED ON Rom. 14:6
CHAPTER 3.THE FOOLISHNESS OF THE CROSS- I COR. 1:18-31
CHAPTER 4.THE POWER OF WEAKNESS BASED ON II COR.
12:1-10
CHAPTER 5.THE PARADOX OF BURDENS Based on Gal. 6:1-10
CHAPTER 6.THE PARADOX OF BLESSING BASED ON
GAL.6:1-10
CHAPTER 7.THE PARADOX OF PRIDE Based on Gal. 6:3
CHAPTER 8.PRAISEWORTHY PRIDE Based on Gal. 6:4
CHAPTER 9.GOOD OUT OF EVIL Based on Phil. 1:12-26
CHAPTER 10.FRUITFUL FRUSTRATION Based on I Thess. 2:13F
CHAPTER 11.THE PARADOX OF MONEY Based on I Tim. 6:3-10
CHAPTER 12. PAUL'S
PARADOXICAL PERSONALITY Acts 21:17-26
1.
PARADOXICAL PARTNERS Based on Rom. 12:9
A truck had run off the road and crashed into a tree forcing
the engine back into the cab. The
driver was trapped in the twisted wreckage.
The doors were crushed and bent out of shape, and he had his feet caught
between the clutch and the brake pedal.
To make matters worse, a fire started in the cab. Concerned people on the scene began to
panic, for it was obvious that the driver would burn to death before the fire
engine could arrive.
Then a man by the name of Charles Jones appeared, and he took
hold of the doors and began to pull.
His muscles so expanded that they literally tore his shirt sleeves. People could not believe it when the door
began to give way. Jones reached inside
and bare-handedly bent the brake and clutch pedals out of the way, and freed
the man's legs. He snuffed out the fire
with his hands, and then crawled inside the cab, and with his back against the
top lifted the roof so other spectators could pull the driver to safety.
We have all heard stories of how mothers have lifted cars, and
done other superhuman things to rescue their children, because they are
motivated by love, but this man was a stranger. There was no relationship to the driver. If he was a brother, or son, or even a good
friend, we could see how love would motivate one to such a feat of
strength. But this was not the
case. What then was the motivation that
enabled this stranger to do such a powerful act of love? It was hate. Charles Jones was later interviewed, and was asked why and how he
was able to accomplish such a Herculean feat.
He simply replied, "I hate fire." He had good reason for his deep hatred, for a few months earlier
he had to stand by and watch helplessly as his little daughter burned to
death. His intense hatred for this
enemy gave him enormous strength to fight it.
His hate led him to a great act of love.
On the other hand, love can lead to hate. Most of the stories of hatred you read about
are directly connected with love. Just
recently I read of a man who shot his wife and her two brothers because she was
leaving him. The statistics show that
most murders in our country happen in families. People are most likely to kill those whom they love, or once
loved. Love is the cause of so many
acts of hate.
What a paradox, that these two strong and opposite emotions
can so often be linked together. Paul
in verse 9 puts them side by side, and urges Christians to feel them both in
the same breath. He says love must be
sincere, and then demands that we hate what is evil. Paul was not the founder of this paradoxical partnership of love
and hate. The unity of these two
emotions runs all through the Bible. I
counted 27 verses in the Bible where love and hate are in the same verse
together. We remember the old song,
Love and Marriage that says they go together like a horse and carriage, but it
is equally Biblical to say, love and hate go together. Listen to a partial reading of how the Bible
links these two emotions in partnership.
Psalm 45:7 "You love righteousness
and hate wickedness. Therefore God, your God has set you above your companions
by anointing you with the oil of joy."
Psalm97:10 "Let those
who love the Lord hate evil for he guards the lives of his faithful ones."
Eccles. 3:8 "There is a
time to love and a time to hate."
Isa. 61:8 "For I, the
Lord, love justice; I hate robbery and iniquity." The love-hate partnership begins in the very
nature of God. God could not be sincere
in his love if he did not hate that which destroys love. To be God like and Christlike is to combine
in our being, love and hate.
Rev. 2:6 Jesus says,
"...You have this in your favor:
You hate the practices of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate."
You cannot be a good Christian, and a truly loving Christian,
if you do not feel hate for that which is the enemy of love. There are many more texts we could read but
the point is established: Hatred is a
legitimate emotion in the Christian life.
In fact, it is a vital emotion if we are to be balanced. This is, however, one of those dangerous
truths that can lead to disaster if it is
not understood. These
paradoxical partners can still be bitter enemies. There is still the major distinction to be made between the
hatred of evil, which is good, and the evil of hatred, which is bad.
Hatred is still a deadly foe, and an emotion that has to be
kept in check, or it can lead us to become very unChristlike, and totally out
of God's will. I John 4:20 says, "If
anyone says, I love God, yet hates his brother he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother,
whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen." Hate destroys relationships of both God and
man. Prov. 8:36 has wisdom say,
"All who hate me love death."
Hate for what is good is love for what is evil, and when these two
emotions are reversed from the way God intended them to function, they are
destructive of all that is of value in life.
The traditional, and normal, concept of love and hate being
opposites and enemies is valid and true.
It is just that it is not the whole truth about love and hate. There is more,
and we must understand the
more, or we will not be in control, and use these emotions the way God intends. The area where we are weak is in this area
of understanding the paradoxical partnership of love and hate. Emotional health depends on our growth in
this area. To be what God expects us to
be, we need to understand the reality of what is called ambivalence. This word stands for that psychological
experience in which opposing emotions, such as love and hate, joy and sorrow,
or desire and fear, exist at the same time within the same person. Paul is urging Christians to be ambivalent
by telling them to feel love and hate at the same time. It is a cliché among Christians that we are
to love the sinner and hate the sin. It
is very hard to separate the two, and so we really are feeling both emotions at
the same time toward the same individual.
This is ambivalence. This leads
to much emotional turmoil in the person who does not see this mixture as
legitimate.
In marriage, for example, it is a common cause for the
breakdown of relationships. Many mates
have no understanding of the paradoxical partnership of love and hate. They are locked into a narrow view of
reality that says, I cannot love that which I hate, or vice versa. They discover that they feel hate toward
their mate for a variety of things, and thus they conclude, love has flown the
coop. I lost my love. Because of this false psychology that says,
love and hate cannot dwell together, they let their hate boot their love
out. It happens all the time that
people who really love each other get divorced just because they hate aspects
of each other.
Children run away, and mates shoot each other, and all sorts of
tragic behavior takes place because people do not understand it can be valid to
have hate for people you love. Almost
every child hates their parents at some point in life. Sometimes they verbalize it, and are not as
subtle as little Bryan. Little Bryan
had just been punished, and he sat in silence at lunch. Finally he looked up and said, "God can
do anything He wants to can't He?"
"Yes dear," his mother replied, "God can do anything." Bryan looked up again and said, "God
doesn't have parents does He?" God
doesn't have parents, but He does have children, and that relationship also leads
to ambivalence. God knows the mixed
emotions of love and hate.
Way back in the fourth century St. Augustine described the
divine ambivalence. He wrote,
"Wherefore in a wonderful and divine manner, He both hated us and loved us
at the same time. He hated us, as being
different from what He had made us; but as our iniquity had not entirely
destroyed His work in us, He could at the same time in every one of us hate
what we had done, and loved what proceeded from Himself." The cross becomes the central focus of the
divine ambivalence. The cross is where
God's wrath and judgment were poured out, and Jesus bore the hatred of God for
man's sin. Yet the cross is where the
love of God is brightest, for there He gave His Son, and the Son gave His life
to atone for sin, and make it possible for all men to be forgiven, redeemed,
and reconciled to Him in love.
Never again, and no where else do we see the paradoxical
partnership of love and hate working together on so grand a scale. If God did not hate sin, there would be no
cross, and if God did not love the sinner, there would be no cross. The cross is a love-hate symbol of the
divine ambivalence. So what does this
mean for our emotional system? It means
we need to accept our own ambivalence, and not flea from it, or seek to
suppress it, as if it made us abnormal.
Accept ambivalence as part of what it means to be made in the image of
God, with the capacity to both love and hate.
If mates could see it is okay to hate those we love, they
would not let their hate destroy their love.
Love makes its highest investments in a mate. Love is a commitment of trust.
When that trust is violated,
or rejected, it is one of life's sharpest pains. It hurts for someone you love to be unloving, and that hurt, if
persistent, leads to hate. It does not
mean you cease to love the one you hate, for if you didn't love them it would
not hurt, and you wouldn't hate them.
The more you love the more you hurt when love is rejected, and so you
can hate most those you love most.
Christians, for example, almost never hate atheists. Most Christian hatred is directed toward
other Christians in the family of God, because they are hurt by other
Christians, and not unbelievers. You do
not expect an unbeliever to be loving, and so you can handle their
rejection. But when another Christian
rejects your love it is a hurt that can lead to hate. This explains why the worse wars are civil wars. They are battles of people who are close,
and should be loving. Family conflicts
are the most dangerous of all, because they are between people who love each
other, and thus, they generate the hottest hostility.
The dangers of the love-hate ambivalence can be controlled by
awareness of what is happening, and an understanding of the why. We
need to see these two opposites can be partners, and not feel the stress
of a civil war when we have them both together. We need to see that love and hate have more in common than we
realize. They are both hot emotions,
and you can be a flame with love, or a flame with hatred. Both are called passions that make the blood
boil. Water can't quench the fire of
love sang Solomon, and the burning fire of hatred can quickly turn
relationships to ashes.
Both of these are intense emotions that tend to want to
dominate the whole personality, and push out all other interests. Love and hate both long to consume the
object of their passion. They are so
different, so much alike, because they both are based on the same value system. Paul says to hate what is evil, and to cling
to what is good. The Greek word for
cling is the same root Paul used in Eph. 5:31 where we read, "For this
reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined unto his
wife." To cling to, or cleave to
the good is to love the good, and want to be one with it, as we in love long to
be one with our mate. Jesus used the same word as Paul uses here in Matt.
19:6. "For this reason a man will
leave his father and mother and be united to his wife." The words cleave, and cling to, and adhere
to, runs all through the Bible to refer to the strong desires to love others
and God.
If we are to cleave to, and strongly love others and God, and
the good, the true, and the beautiful, it follows, as night follows the day, we
must hate what destroys these values. You
must hate what is false, and what ruins relationships between yourself and
others. If the world we live in is a
world of good and evil, then a healthy and realistic emotional system must
experience both love and hate. If you
love anything, you must hate something, and if you hate anything, it is because
you love something. You cannot have the
one without the other.
Life is a mixture of good and evil, therefore, the balanced
life is one of mixed emotions. Ambivalence is not neurotic, but it is
normal. It is the mixture of opposites
that gives life balance. The reason you
can eat a dessert even after you can't eat another bite of the food you have
been eating is because it is different.
Your body can take on a little more because of the variety, but any more
of the same is intolerable. The
balanced Christian life is one where there is no fear of any emotion because
there is an awareness that variety gives life balance. Some hate is needed in a loving life to give
balance. Just as recipes call for
opposites to create a dish pleasing to the palate, so the recipe for the mature
Christian life calls for opposites to be pleasing to God. The salt and the sugar go into the dish as
partners. The sweet and the sour do
also, and so love and hate are the paradoxical partners that make the Christian
life a tasty treat to God.
We all know, however, that too much of a good thing can really
ruin the whole dish. Proportion is the
key. You cannot just drop a package of
pepper in a dish that calls for a spoon full.
Ingredients have to be measured to be compatible partners in making a
good dish. So it is with love and hate,
and all other emotions of life. God is
love, but also has hate. Love is the
dominant character of God's being. Hate
is only a part of his personality that
enables him to be realistic in relating to a fallen world. John 3:16 could have said, "God so
hated the sin of the world that He poured out His wrath on His Son that man
might escape it, and be saved."
That would be true, but that is not the way the good news is
communicated. It says, "God so
loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son." Love is the dominate motive of God's
will. His hate is always secondary, and
under the control of His love. When we
can combine these paradoxical partners in this same way, we will have the
balance necessary for mature Christian living.
Note that Paul in verse 9 surrounds the legitimate hate of the
believer with the dominate love. Love
keeps hate in bounds. It is okay to
hate as long as you cling to what is good.
You must refuse to let hate rob you of your key values that you
love. If hate makes you lose the values you are to cling to, it
becomes an evil, and not a partner of love.
It is okay to hate all kinds of things about those whom you love, just
as long as you go on loving them for their values. It is all right to hate the fact that your mate was so
conditioned by their upbringing that they cannot express affection the way you
desire. There are all kinds of defects
in all of us that are hateful, because they fall so far short of the
ideal. Feeling negative about this is
realistic, but it becomes a destructive evil when we do not promote love as the
senior partner in this pair of paradoxical partners.
The Bible makes it clear that every human being is worthy of
love, no matter how far they fall short.
It is a Christian obligation to see that even our enemies have value,
and are to be objects of love. It is
the task of love to see all that is truly hateful, and yet find a way to make
love the dominate motivation. Edwin
Markham put it so well in his poem.
He drew a circle that shut
me out,
Heretic, rebel, a thing to
flout,
But love and I had the wit
to win,
We drew a circle that took
him in.
You can hate who you will, for what you will, and be in the
center of God's will if you have a sincere love that strives always to cling
to, and cleave to what is good in that person.
You cannot be healthy without hate, but you cannot be happy unless your
hate is always an assistant to love.
Let hate dominate, and you will be a sick and sad person. It is not
enough to love flowers to be a good gardener. You must also hate weeds. But
pity the poor gardener who becomes so obsessed with fighting weeds that he no
longer has any time to enjoy flowers. This is what happens to those who allow
hate to become the senior partner, and dominate their life.
In the healthy personality, the love-hate partnership operates
with a proper balance in relationship to oneself. We all hate our own defects, weaknesses, and sins. We get disgusted with ourselves often, but
we also quickly forgive ourselves, and press on, because our self-love
dominates over our self-depreciation.
When we make an error on the road that causes the other guy to curse and
shout, we feel a sense of guilt for our mistake,
but it does not last long
because we are so understanding of our humanness. We quickly forgive ourselves, and get on with living. We take a great step upward in maturity when
we can do this same thing with others.
Love is the senior partner in this paradoxical partnership when we can
soon get hate calmed down so that love can make the key decision on how we will
respond to the folly of others.
The two key steps to developing a healthy emotional life are,
(1) Accept ambivalence- it is okay, and
even God like to have mixed emotions.
(2) Advance love-to the level of
senior partner. In other words, love is
to be the leader over all other emotions.
It is vitally important then that love be real, genuine, and
sincere. Love is the leader and it must
be authentic. Love is the key to all
the other emotions doing what they ought to do. That is why Paul begins this passage with the demand that love must
be sincere. We all know that anything
of great value tends to be counterfeited, and love is the highest value in the
world of emotions, and so man has developed many ways to fake it.
Mark Twain dedicated one of his books to John Smith. It was not because he had any affection for
a man by that name, but because he discovered it was the most popular name in
the country, and if everyone by that name bought his book, he would have a
decent profit. Deception in love is
common because people really believe all is fair in love and war. A French restaurant has come up with a
gimmick that enables a man to appear very loving and generous. When he and his partner come in, both are
given a menu, but his has the real prices.
Her menu has highly inflated prices, so that when he orders, she is
struck dumb by his elaborate generosity for her. Not knowing it is not genuine generosity she will supposedly be
deeply grateful to him for what she feels is sincere love. The world is full of this sort of thing, and
the Christian is not beyond playing the same game.
Love is the first fruit of the Spirit, and the highest
Christian virtue, but faking it is not legitimate. In fact, if you get good at faking it, you may never develop the
real thing. Nothing leads to
superficiality in relationships faster than those that are based on flowery
language alone. The Christian needs to
watch this in relationship to God, and not build up a vocabulary of high
sounding praise which does not represent his heart. God knows when love is mere lip service. He has had all of history to experience the
insincere. It does not take long for a
mate or a friend to also learn that your talk can be cheap. A Chinese proverb says, "Never praise a
woman too highly. If you stop, she'll
think you don't love her anymore; if you keep it up she'll think she's too good
for you."
Sincere love seeks to learn the need of the other person, and
meet that need. You don't go by
proverbs or other people's advice, or faking it for effect. You find the need and you meet it. If your mate does not like a lot of flattery
you cut it out. If they crave more, you
give more, because you chose to love and satisfy that need. Sincere love is like the love of
Christ. He saw man's deepest need and He
met it. Jesus said that the Good
Samaritan was an ideal example of loving your neighbor. He saw the need and he met it. It is sincere love that will keep legitimate
hate in its place, and prevent illegitimate hate from fulfilling its evil
intention.
John and Mary Edwards were driving along the New Jersey
Turnpike when they saw a young soldier thumbing a ride. They picked him up, and noticed he was very
sad and sullen. Mary began to talk
about her son who had also been in the service, and they invited him to come
and have lunch with them. They observed
a change of attitude, and he began to relax.
He told of his homesickness and frustration with army life. He began to smile. When they reached his destination, John pressed a folded ten
dollar bill into his hand, and a slip with their address saying, when you get
out of the army, come see me and I'll give you a job. The young man had tears in his eyes as he mumbled his thanks. Two weeks later the Edwards received a
letter from him. He told of how bitter
and resentful he was that day they met.
He was AWOL from the army, and was in a spirit of hatred for
everyone. He said he had made up his
mind to kill the first person who picked him up. You were the first, but you were so good and kind to me I
couldn't do it, so when you were not looking I took the bayonet out of my hand,
and slide it under the rear seat. You
will find it there, and they did.
Sincere love encountered bitter hate, and they were not
partners, but fierce foes. Love drove
hate from the field and won the battle because it tried sincerely to meet the
needs of that young man. They let him know that it is a world where people do
care, and there are values worth living for.
Love is stronger than hate, and when they are enemies, love is to be so
sincere that it will drive hate from the field defeated. But even when they are partners, love must
see to it that even though hate adds to the whole picture, it is always to be
the case that the ultimate goal is the goal of love.
When hate arises in your feelings, do not fear it, but call on
all the forces of love within you to surround it, and contain it, so that it
does not move you toward goals displeasing to God. Make sure it moves you to figure out how love can use the energy
of hate for its goals. This is the
Godlike and Christlike way to use these paradoxical partners.
WHEN OPPOSITES ARE THE SAME Based on Rom. 14:6
A cartoon pictures the door of an office in the central
government building of Moscow. The sign reads, Commissar for the
Electrification of all the Russias.
Underneath is a bit of paper on which is written, "Please knock‑bell
out of order." We can see the
humor in the great inconsistency of one who plans to bring electricity to everybody
else, but whose own bell is out of order.
It would be helpful if we could see it in ourselves as easily as see it
in others. The church is the only
organization on earth that claims to be able to set the bells of joy ringing in
every heart. Yet, the claim is often
mocked, because our own bell is out of order.
While we claim to be able to give light to all in darkness, our own
light often flickers, and even goes out.
Kenneth Slack said, "The world cannot believe claims which are
denied in the very body which makes them."
For example, in the early church there was a movement among
high caste Hindus in South India toward the Christian faith. They found Hinduism inadequate to meet the
challenge of modern knowledge. On the
very threshold of their baptism, however, they discovered that Christianity was
divided, and that if they united all over the country with various missionary
societies, they would find themselves in separated parts of the church, which
did not cooperate with one another.
They quickly drew back, for why, they asked, should we who were united
in paganism enter a new faith which is supposedly superior where we will become
divided, and less of a unity and brotherhood.
The church had said, "come to us, for we ring the bells of
reconciliation for all men." But
when they came, they saw the small print which told them that the churches own
bell was out of order, and they left.
This is the tragedy of a divided church. Is the solution a great giant of a church
with all denominations united? This is
like trying to make peace among all animals by putting them in a common
cage. They might be together, but
without bars they would still tear each other to pieces. No external plan can fulfill spiritual
ideals. The solution to the problem of
Christian unity is for Christians to learn to live according to Biblical
principles. It is folly to work for
conformity, which is unrealistic. It is
wisdom to give heed to Paul's clear teaching that opposites can be the same. Paul teaches that Christians can dwell in
unity even though they have opposite convictions. Eating meat, and not eating meat, are opposites. Keeping the Sabbath, and not keeping it, are
opposites. Yet, Paul says Christians
can be on each of these sides for the same reason; with the same motive, and
with the same result‑the glory of God.
When two men saw a log one pulls while the other one pushes,
and then they reverse. They are always doing the opposite thing from each
other, but all the time they are working together for the same end. T. DeWitt Talmage says this idea relates to
the church. He writes, "The
different denominations were intended, by holy rivalry and honest competition,
to keep each other wide awake. While
each denomination ought to preach all the doctrines of the Bible, I think it is
the mission of each more emphatically
to preach some one doctrine. The
Calvinistic churches to preach the sovereignty of God, the Arminian man's free
agency etc. ..." Each denomination
has its unique contribution to make.
If this be so, then it is Billy Graham and not his critics who
is on Biblical ground by cooperating with men of opposite convictions. Graham is operating on the Biblical principle that opposites can be the
same, that is, that men can have radically different views, but be equally
holding those views for the glory of God.
The critics object that some of the things believed by certain groups
are not Biblical. Paul is fully aware
that some Christians may be in error, but he clearly teaches here that a
Christian has the right to be sincerely wrong on non‑essential
issues. In fact, it is better to be
sincerely wrong on a non‑essential issue than to be indifferently
correct, for conviction is what counts in these areas.
Paul knew that the weak Christians were wrong in their
attitude on meat and certain days, but he recognized that if they were
persuaded in their own minds, they could practice their mistakes for the glory
of God. Is Paul saying, Christians can
be weak, and have strange, almost superstitious, convictions and practices, and
still be pleasing to God? That is
precisely what he is saying. I can
believe that parents can sincerely believe that having water sprinkled on their
child's head will make their salvation more probable. If they believe this, and do not have it done, they are guilty of
sin. Therefore, if they act on their
conviction, and do it, they are doing so to obey and please God. But if it is not objectively true that such
an act helps, is it still pleasing to God?
Just as pleasing as not eating meat when God really does not care if you
eat it or not.
It is hard for Christians to believe this paradoxical truth
that opposites can be the same. That is why so few Christians have a Biblical
attitude toward other Christians who hold opposite views. Paul paradoxical principle is just too
radical for most Christians. It means a
Christian can be right in being sincerely wrong. You can't be sincerely wrong about Jesus and still be right, but
you can on a multitude of other subjects.
It is, according to Paul, one of the privileges of Christian liberty to
risk making mistakes, either by being overly conservative, or by being overly
progressive. As long as one stops
within the bonds of doing all he does with a thankful heart, and with a desire
to please his master, he is free to make mistakes on minor matters, and take
positions opposite of other Christians.
Henry Ward Beecher, one of the greatest preachers America ever
produced, said, "There are many
who are called Christians in whom the kingdom of God is no bigger than a
thimble. There are men who have a few
ideas, who are orthodox, and who make no mistakes in theology, but woe be to
the man who does not make any mistakes.
Count the sands of the sea, if you can, without misreckoning....If you
have a huge bucket, and a pint of water in it, you will never make the mistake
of spilling the water, but if a man is carrying a huge bucket full of water he
will be certain to spill it." In
other words, if you stay in the shallow water of addition, you may always be
right, but greater is the adventure of launching out into the deep of
multiplication where the marvels and mysteries of God's majesty will leave your
finite mind open to the risk of mistakes.
Liberty is always dangerous.
The mistakes the strong Christians made in the Roman church
were mistakes of attitude toward the weak Christians, and Paul later teaches
them how to correct these mistakes. The
weak Christians, however, immediately object that the strong Christians not
only offend them by their opposite views and conduct, but they side with the
world against others of God's children.
This is why the principle of opposites being the same cannot hold water,
for what fellowship hath light with darkness.
No one can tell us that Christians can agree with non‑Christians
against other Christians, and still be doing it for the glory of God.
This sounds like a powerful argument against Paul's
paradoxical principle that opposites can be the same. As a matter of fact, however, it does not alter the principle at
all. It is only opposites among
believers that can be equally for the glory of God. Naturally, if an unbeliever takes a position opposite a believer,
he is not doing it for the glory of God.
Nevertheless, the unbeliever can hold a position that is held by a
believer. Some non‑Christians are
on the same side as Christians on almost all controversial issues. Non‑Christians oppose drinking,
immorality, drugs and pornography just as Christians do. Christians and non‑Christians stand
together on all kinds of issues. There
are Christians and atheists in both political party's.
The strong Christians in Rome were doing the same things as
the pagans. They bought they same meat,
and instead of closing up shop on the Sabbath with the Jewish Christians, they
work right along with the pagans. They
did so, however, not out of indifference, but out of conviction, and Paul says
their conduct, therefore, was pleasing to God, even though it conformed to
pagan conduct, and was opposite to that of other Christians.
You mean a Christian can take a position opposite of mine, and
one that may be held by unbelievers, and still be as pleasing to God as I
am? That is exactly what Paul is
saying, and John Wesley, a man whom God used to change the course of history,
practiced this principle of Paul. He
wrote, "Men may die without any opinions, and yet be carried to Abraham's
bosom, but if we be without love, what will knowledge avail? I will not quarrel with you about
opinions. Only see that your heart be
right toward God, and that you know and love the Lord Jesus Christ, and
love your neighbor, and walk as your
Master walked, and I ask no more. I am
sick of opinions."
But an objection arises from the legalist. It is no mere matter of opinion where the
law of God is concerned. God commanded
us to keep the Sabbath, and also to not eat meat offered to idols. I can be tolerant of other opinions, but how
can I tolerate open defiance of God's revealed law? If you say Christian liberty allows one to disregard the Sabbath,
then why not disregard all of the commandments to the glory of God? Again, a strong objection to Paul's teaching
when carried out to a logical conclusion.
The problem is the objector fails to distinguish between law and
evil. Evil is that which is in and of
itself opposed to God's nature. No
Christian can ever do evil and be pleasing to God.
Paul's principle can never be used to justify any evil in
thinking or in conduct. However, a law, even a law of God, is something that
can be arbitrary, and may not deal with something that is evil in itself at
all. A law can be changed or eliminated
with no offense to God's nature. There
is nothing inherently evil in traveling on the 7th day, or in gathering wood,
and any other work. Yet, it was a sin
punishable by death under the law. It
was not evil in itself, however, and so the law could be eliminated and what
was forbidden could then be allowed without allowing anything evil. The same was true with many Old Testament
laws.
Just is the case with laws of the land. Not all laws are against evil. They are often to regulate behavior for our
convenience, but if they are no longer helpful they can be eliminated. Therefore, according to Paul, if you are
convinced in your mind that God no longer holds you responsible to obey the law
of the Sabbath, and the laws regulating eating, you are free to disregard them,
and be as pleasing in his sight as those who still obey them. If this be true
concerning those things that are actually mentioned in Scripture, how much more
does it apply to areas that are not mentioned.
For example, can it be that the Episcopalian with his rigid formality,
and the Pentecostal with his near chaotic informality are both pleasing to
God? Who can doubt it, if they are both
convinced in their own minds that these ways of worship are the best.
If a man can eat meat offered to an idol which would be a sin
for the weak Christian to eat, and yet do it for the glory of God, who can deny
that Christians can do many things opposite from other Christians, and do them
for the glory of God? Newell sees here
a principle to be applied in many areas of life and writes, "Let those of
legal tendencies mark this: That a man
may regard not what we regard, and do so unto the Lord." Christians do and believe many things which
are opposite to what others do and believe, but if they do so with the
conviction they are pleasing to God, then their opposites are the same.
THE FOOLISHNESS OF THE CROSS Based on I Cor. 1:18-31
The mayor and other dignitaries were looking into the vast pit
dug for the new hospital to be built.
The town half-wit came up and gazed into the pit, and asked the mayor
what he was going to do with this big hole.
The mayor decided to humor him and said, "We are going to round up
all the fools in town and pile them in there." The half-wit thought a moment and then said, "Whose gonna be
left to cover um up?"
Even a half-wit knows that in some sense all men are fools,
but I have to confess I never really realized to what degree this is true until
I studied what the Bible says about fools and foolishness. The subject is so vast, and the evidence is
so overwhelming that only a fool would deny that all men are fools. This does not sound very nice, however, and
so it is wise for us to see there is a positive side to being a fool. So much so, that Paul in I Cor. 3:18 urges
Christians to be fools, and in 4:10 he says, "We are fools for
Christ."
To add to the paradox of being a Christian fool, Paul in this
passage of I Cor. 1:18-31 glories in Christian folly, and links almost
everything of Christian nobility to foolishness. He writes of the foolishness
of the cross; the foolishness of wisdom, and the foolishness of preaching, and
most shocking of all, for it seems to border on blasphemy, Paul even writes in
verse 25 of the foolishness of God.
Then he says in verse 27 that God chose the foolish things of the world
to shame the wise. And the foolish
things are the Christians.
So what it comes down to is this: All men are in some sense fools, but sense all are not fools in
the same way, we have to make a distinction between worldly fools and wise
fools. The worldly fools are those who feel so wise they have no need of light
from God. These fools say in their
hearts that there is no God. Man is the
measure of all things, and He determines His own destiny. They say science and human philosophy is all
we need to produce a utopia. We do not
need the Bible or God to create our own heaven.
The wise fool, in contrast, recognizes that human wisdom is so
limited, and so there is a need for wisdom from above. They are seeing as fools from the point of
view of the worldly fool. God, however,
sees them as wise, and so the two perspectives make them wise fools-that is
people who seem to choose foolishness and trust in foolishness, but because it
is the foolishness of God they are wise.
So what we have here is a study in relativity. The worldly wise who reject God's revelation are, in relation to
eternal truth, fools. Those, however,
who choose the way of God are seen as fools, in relation to the way of the
world,
but in fact, they are the
truly wise. Type one fools seem wise to
men, but are fools to God. Type 2 fools seems fools to men, but are wise to
God. So wisdom and folly are relative
to whose perspective you are seeing them from.
Paul's whole battle with the Corinthians was to get them to
stop being wise before the world and fools before God, and to reverse that to
being fools before the world, and wise before God. The goal of the Christian is to become a wise fool. The Corinthians were missing this mark
because they came from a long tradition of philosophers who had all the
answers. As Greeks they were considered
a wise people. The result was, the
church was in chaos because of all the pride of worldly wisdom. Some thought Paul was the best. Others that
it was Peter, and still others that Apollos was number one. Some said they were all wrong, and we follow
Jesus only. The church was divided
because, in their pride,they were deciding what was best. They were also picking and choosing the
gifts they felt were best. In pride
Christians can set themselves up as the judge of what is wise and what is
foolish, and in so doing they make their human judgment, rather than God's revelation,
the basis for their value
system, and this is folly.
If human reason is going to be the standard of judgment, then
the whole plan of God is nothing but foolishness, and nothing is more foolish
than the foolishness of the cross. Just
look at the evidence of its folly.
1. The innocent dying for the guilty.
2. The folly of having a way out and not taking it.
3. The folly of having power to destroy your enemy, but letting them
destroy you.
4. The folly of surrender to a foe you could easily conquer.
5. The folly of suffering when comfort and pleasure is at your
command.
6. The folly of having the power to do miracles, and yet do nothing.
7. The folly of having an eloquent defense and yet not opening your
mouth.
8. The folly of going to hell when you never had to leave heaven.
9. The folly of volunteering for a job that is certain death.
10. The folly of being God
and yet letting mere men push you around.
11. The folly of forgiving
those most worthy of judgment.
We could go on, but I am sure you get the point. The cross is pure foolishness from a
rational point of view. It is nonsense,
and a ridiculous way for God to go about saving man from the perspective of the
worldly wise. An intelligent lost man
is scandalized by the cross. He feels
that only fools can be Christians if they buy into the foolishness of the
cross. When Paul gave his testimony and
told of the death and resurrection of Christ, the
procurator Festes
interrupted him in Acts 26:24 and said to him, "You are out of your
mind, Paul! Your great learning is driving you insane." Paul responds in verse 25, "I am not
insane...What I am saying is true and reasonable. So what we have here is the worldly fool meeting the wise fool,
and each fool feels the other is a fool indeed. And the point is, both are right from their point of view.
The village screwball made a friend coming down the sidewalk,
and he said, "Tell me which is the other side of the street." The friend said, "The other side is
over there" pointing to the other side.
"That's funny," said the screwball, "That's what I
thought too, but I just over there and the lady there said it was over
here." Such a paradox of both
sides being the other side can drive a screwball batty, but this is the paradox
of life. Both sides of the argument of
what is wise are fools from the perspective of the other side, and Paul's
advice then is to be a fool for Christ.
Be willing to seem like a fool for the sake of Christ. We are so concerned about being accepted
that we do not like to be seen as a fool. But the more concerned we are about
being respectable to the world, the less we are concerned about being faithful
to the wisdom of God.
We are so easily conformed to the world, and we loss our sense
of mission which is to
confront the world with the
foolishness of God.
In the eyes of the wise
Don't be cool, be a fool.
It may be a loss,
And you'll suffer pain,
But this is the cross
That leads to gain.
Gain that goes beyond the
worldly clever,
For it is gain that lasts
forever.
We are called, not just to be April fools, but perpetual
fools. If we never identify with the
foolishness of the cross, and always conform to the wisdom of the world, we
will still be fools, but not the kind we are called to be. Christians are not beyond the risk of being
worldly fools. A pastor was leaving town, and he told the
church secretary he did not have his sermon titles yet for the bulletin, so she
could just put in something like, the pastor speaks. What about the evening service she asked? He said he was speaking from Psa. 14 which
begins with the words, "The fool has said in his heart there is no
God." The pastor told her to just
make up a title. So she did, and when
the bulletin came out it said-
Morning-The Pastor Speaks.
Evening-What The Fool Said.
In the light of our study, however, it does not need to be
seen as embarrassing, for Paul calls himself a fool for Christ, and his
ministry for Christ he calls, the foolishness of preaching.
Someone said, "You can fool some of the people all the
time, and all of the people some of the time, but most of the time they will
make fools of themselves." Warren
Hammer said, "No woman really makes a fool of a man-she merely gives him
the opportunity to develop his natural capacities." A young preacher traveling with a Gospel
team preached to a Wisconsin congregation, and after the service a Scandinavian
saint grabbed his hand and said, "That was a wonderful message." Trying to be humble he responded, "It
was just Jesus." "No"
said the saint, "It wasn't that good." It can be foolish to attribute all we do to the Lord, for if it
was the Lord it would be a whole lot better.
Pastor Wally Klandrud of Phoenix tells of his first hospital
call. He wanted it to be perfect, and
so he studied all the do's and don'ts of hospital visitation. Nervously he entered the patients room. There was a woman in her eighty's, and the
nurse had told him she was senile. He
was just about to share some words of comfort when she leaped up on the bed
without a stitch of clothing. He tried
to keep his composer, and asked her if he could help. "Gotta go to the bathroom," she responded. The pastor ran into the hall way to look for
a nurse, but none was in sight. He was
in a panic, and ran back to his impatient patient and said, "Mam, there is
nobody out there, but I'll be back next week." As he fled out the door he heard her scream, "Young man I
can't wait till next week!"
True stories like this are endless that reveal the fallibility
that can happen even when we desire sincerely to be tools of God. Instead of tools, God gets fools. Unfortunately, not every foolish thing
Christian do is funny. We have studied
Peter and his many mistakes, and one of them was that he felt it was foolish
for Jesus to talk about dying. The Christian can see the foolishness of the
cross just like the world sees it, and that is what Peter was seeing. God's way are so different than man's, that
if we get caught up in the wisdom of the world, even as Christians, the ways of
God will seem foolish and impractical.
Pastor Vajda of St. Louis tells of his organist who would
always slip down the back stairs to the basement just before the sermon began, and
then return just before it ended. During one of his Lenten services as the
organ ceased, he stepped to the pulpit and began with a gripping
illustration. At the height of a battle
in the Civil War a young soldier thought the command was to charge. He leaped out of the trench with the
regimental flag and started running across no mans land toward enemy fire. When the captain saw that other soldiers
were following the flag bearer, he shouted at the top of his voice, "Come
back here you fool!" As he paused,
everyone could hear the clatter of footsteps as the organist came flying back
up the steps to take her place at the organ.
That was not his intention at all, but he notes that she never again
left the organ during a sermon.
This is in essence what Paul is saying to the
Corinthians-"Get back here you fools.
You are following the way of worldly wisdom which to God is
foolishness. Come back to the
foolishness of God which is true wisdom.
It is wiser to let the world think of you as fools, than to let God
think of you as fools." Somebody
is always going to have you on their fools list, but only a fool would choose
to be on God's list. Be a fool for
Christ, and be on God's list of those who are truly wise. The truly wise are those who are fools for
Christ, and care about people who don't care about anyone but themselves. Paul poured his life out for people who were
self-centered and worldly wise, and they only rejected him and sought to kill
him. Paul still cared and did all he could
to win them to Christ by the foolishness of preaching.
Billy Graham tells of the first time he ever preached. It was in a little Baptist church in
Florida. 32 people were there, and he thought
he had plenty to say. He had four
sermons he thought were 40 to 50 minutes each.
But he was so nervous he preached all four sermons in 8 minutes. That was the foolishness of preaching. But one little boy in the congregation
received Christ, and he realized God can use even our foolishness to accomplish
the wisest things that can happen on earth.
He tells of one of his evangelists who spoke at a university in Costa
Rica. A student came up after and said
she was a Marxist, and she laughed and scorned the message he was
preaching. The evangelist said,
"Before you leave do you mind if I pray for you?" What folly, to ask if you can pray for one
who is mocking you. She was shocked and
said, "I guess it couldn't do any harm." So he began to pray, and as
he did tears of compassion began to trickle down his cheeks. When he finished,
the Marxist was in tears also. She
said, "No one ever cared enough for me to shed a tear. I'll listen to what you have to say." She heard the Gospel and received Christ as
her Savior.
This is the kind of fool Jesus wants. He wants those who will be fool enough to
care about people who don't deserve to be cared about. It is foolishness to waste your life caring
about lost people. It is foolishness to
leave the 99 and risk injury, and who knows what abuse, to go after that one
stupid sheep who has gone astray.
Worldly wisdom would say stay with the odds; don't risk yourself for the
stray. But those who are fools for
Christ,
who understand the
foolishness of the cross, will go, for it is this kind of foolishness that
saved them. God was in Christ
reconciling the world to Himself. God
had the power to condemn the world, and let His Son go free. Instead He let Him die so the guilty might
go free. This is the foolishness of
God, and the foolishness of the cross.
William Stidger wrote,
I saw God bear His soul one
day
Where all the earth might see
The stark and naked heart of
Him
On lonely Calvary.
There
was a crimson sky of blood
And over head a storm;
When lightening slit the
clouds
And light engulfed His form.
Beyond the storm a rainbow
lent
A light to every clod,
For on that cross mine eyes
beheld
The naked soul of God.
No man would be such a God for they consider it foolishness to
suffer for the folly of others. If God
was not foolish from man's perspective there would be no cross, and no way for
man to be forgiven and reconciled to God.
Thank God for such foolishness.
All Christian celebrations are really celebrations of the foolishness of
God. He had the freedom to just forget
fallen man, but He chose to send His Son that they might be redeemed. To magnify the folly of God's plan, it is
all based on grace. He pays a high
price, and then instead of reaping a huge profit, he gives away the salvation
he purchased for free. Jesus could have
been the richest king that ever lived.
He could have made a mile high palace with streets of gold and walls
filled with jewels. He could have had
heaven on earth had he charged as little as a thousand dollars each. Every living soul would slave
in order to save that much
to get into the kingdom.
There is no such plan, however, for salvation is free, and
whosoever will may come and drink freely from the fountain of life. Jesus had the greatest money maker of all
time at His fingertips, and He gave it away.
From the worldly perspective this was nothing but sheer folly. But without the foolishness of the cross
there is no answer to the folly of this fallen world. A Polish Jew who had been converted to Christ was asked how he
could see his people killed and still believe in the love of God. He saw the blood of his dearest friends
stain the streets of his town, but this was his response, "As I looked at
that man upon the cross I knew I must make up my mind once and for all, and
either take my stand beside him, and share in his undefeated faith in God, or
else fall finally into a bottomless pit of bitterness, hatred, and unutterable
despair." He was saying, unless
there is a God willing to suffer for this loss world, there is no hope, and
life has no meaning. But if there is
such a God, as we see in Jesus on the cross, then nothing evil can do, can rob
us of hope.
This is why men like Jim Elliot risk their lives and die to
get the message of the cross to the pagan world. He said, "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to
gain what he cannot lose." May God
help us to be fools for Christ and share with this lost world the foolishness
of the cross.
CHAPTER 4.THE POWER OF WEAKNESS
BASED ON II COR. 12:1-10
One of the most incredible biographies ever written is that of
Robert Babcock. As a young boy he made
a bomb out of some powder he found in his father's barn. He had a hard time getting it to go off, but
when it finally did, it blew up in his face and he was instantly blinded, and
remained so for the rest of his life.
His parents, realizing there was not hope of his sight being restored,
took him to an institute for the blind in Philadelphia.
Robert did so well, and had
such a strong will to become independent, that even as a youth he traveled home
to Michigan by himself on a train.
He went on to college, and every year was near the top of his
class. In 1869 at the age of 18 he began
to study at Ann Arbor Medical College as the first student to ever begin the
study of medicine as a blind person.
You would naturally assume that he did not go far,
but the fact is, he went all
the way. He went to Chicago Medical School,
and there had to dissect a body, which students with good eye sight find to be
a difficult task. Sightless though he
was, he passed the test to the astonishment of the examining board. After further study in New York, he was
licensed to begin to practice in Chicago.
It took him ten years to build up a strong practice, for obvious
reasons. His reputation grew, however,
until he was made Professor Of The Chicago College of Physicians and
Surgeons. Many other honors were
bestowed upon him, and he wrote three important books that made him a world
figure among doctors. His thorn in the
flesh was no stumbling block, but was a stepping stone to greater heights of
service.
His life is an excellent illustration of the philosophy of
life that Paul expounds in our text.
The paradox that Paul proclaims here is that a handicap can be a
help. A painful problem can be a
powerful promoter of what is good. A
weakness can be an asset and a strength.
No one knows for sure just what Paul's thorn in the flesh was, but there
is much evidence to believe those scholars who are convinced that his problem,
like that of Dr. Babcock, was with his eyes.
Paul was not blind, but there is reason to believe he never could have
passed the eye test for a drivers license.
On the day of his conversion Paul was struck blind by the glory of
Christ, and remained sightless for three days.
He regained his sight, but there seems to have been a weakness left, for
in Gal. 4:15 he says that the Galatians would have plucked out their eyes to
give to him. It is, as if he were
saying,
they recognized his greatest
need was to have some decent eyes. In
Gal. 6:11 he wrote, "See in what
large letters I am writing to you."
This implies that his authentic writings can be known by his large
letters, the letters of a man who cannot see smaller letters.
Besides this evidence, it seems so fitting for the purpose for
which God allowed the problem Paul had with his great visions. He was in danger of being overwhelmed with pride. It would be very humbling for him to hardly
be able to see, and then try to boast of his great visions. People who saw him having to put his nose to
a book to read, and to put his hand out to keep from running into the city
gate, would laugh him to scorn, if he spoke of his great visions. The skeptics would mock him. An eye problem would definitely keep Paul
humble about his visions, and prevent his boasting in himself.
Regardless of what it was, Paul was impressed by the fact that
God could use a weakness to make him strong.
There is power in weakness Paul learned; a power that cannot be made
available in any other way. Paul is the
great expert on weakness. Out of 33
references to weakness in the New Testament, Jesus used the word once, Peter
used it once, and all the rest are from the pen of Paul. Keep in mind that Paul was a strong opponent
of Christ before his conversion. He
despised the weak Nazarenes, those followers of that weakling who perished in
disgrace upon the cross. He attacked
them and demonstrated what strength could do.
When the Lord appeared and struck him down in blindness, he had a
radical change in his thinking about the relationship of power and
weakness. He learned by experience that
it was his force that was really weak, and Christ's weakness was really
powerful. The result was, the paradox
in power and weakness running all through Paul's writings.
I Cor. 1:25, "The
weakness of God is stronger than men."
I Cor. 1:27, "God chose
what is weak in the world to shame the strong."
I Cor. 15:43, referring to
the resurrection of the body Paul writes, "It is sown in weakness,
it is raised in power."
II Cor. 13:4, "For He
was crucified in weakness, but lives by the power of God."
The cross is the greatest illustration of the power in
weakness, for by that experience of going like a helpless lamb to the
slaughter, Jesus conquered all the obstacles in the way of man's
salvation. Paul not only learned to
accept the truth of power in weakness, but he tells us he learned to boast, and
even be glad for his weaknesses, for they became potential channels through
which the power of God could be manifest.
In II Cor. 11:30 he writes, "If I must boast, I will boast of the
things that show my weakness." This seems to be contrary to all logic. Everyone preaches that God uses our gifts, but when do we hear
that God uses our weaknesses? Yet, if
we take Paul seriously, his greatest power was not in abilities, but in his
weaknesses. In I Cor. 2:3 he says, "And
I was with you in weakness and in much fear and trembling."
We picture Paul as a dynamic ball of fire erupting from a
volcano like stature, but the facts are, he was small in weak in appearance,
and by his own testimony, full of fear and trembling as he preached. Paul was a handicapped man, and the reason
God used this, far from perfect, specimen of manhood to proclaim the perfect
Savior, is stated by Paul himself in I Cor. 2:5, "That your faith might
not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God." If a powerful, talented, dynamic man moves
people to respond to the Gospel, one never knows how much of the movement is
generated by the power of personality.
But if a weak and handicapped person is used to motivate people, one can
see that the power of motivation must come from the Holy Spirit.
If this be a true understanding of the way God works, the
logical conclusion is that the typical American way of witness is not
necessarily the best and Biblical way.
The American way tends to exalt the strong and ignore the weak. Get the top athlete, the most popular movie
star or singer, and the finest politician or author, and let them tell the
world what Christ means to them. Only a
blind man would deny that this bears fruit, but I wonder if it does not rob us
of the greatest resource in the church, which is the masses of
adults and youth who are not
strong, but weak, handicapped and in large measure ungifted.
Is it possible that the fruit of the spirit growing on weaker branches
might be even more impressive, at least to those God wants us to reach in our
community? Can our very weaknesses in
any way be an asset to the kingdom of God?
Let us keep this question in mind as we continue to explore this paradox
of power in weakness. As a principle
for natural life we can see how it holds true, for weakness is what has made
man strong. It is the very fact that
man cannot protect himself against other creatures who are stronger,
that has forced him to
develop weapons of strength. Man is so
weak he can only jump a short way off the ground, and that weakness has driven
him to develop ways to fly, not only around the world, but beyond the
world. Weakness leads to power when the
weakness motivates men to find a way to offset that weakness.
This is certainly involved in what Paul is saying. It is only the Christian who is fully
conscious of his weakness who will depend upon God, and seek for God's power. The strong and talented Christian can easily
become self-sufficient and independent.
That very strength can become their weakness. And honest awareness of weakness, therefore, is the starting
point in the spiritual quest for God's power.
You can only really seek with all your heart after that which you are
fully aware that you lack. They only
find God's power who fully realize their own weakness. Spurgeon said, "God helps us most when
we most need his help." If you are
strong and feel no need of God's help, then you are weak. When, however, you are weak and know it, and
so depend upon God, then you are strong.
Paul's paradox is not strange at all, but a fact of life we all
experience. When we can grasp the words
of Christ, "Without Me you can do nothing," then we are in the state
of weakness where we can say with Paul, "I can do all things through
Christ who strengthens me."
The stronger a Christian is the greater is his danger of
depending upon his own abilities. It is possible for believers to rely on their
own power to live the Christian life. God
has built a paradox into the divine-human relationship. It is only when man surrenders to God that
he conquers. It is only when he submits
to be dependent upon God that he becomes a channel of divine power. Gideon had to learn this paradoxical truth. Gideon had too strong an army, so God made
him send 32,000 of his men home. He
deliberately made his army weak in order to demonstrate the divine power in
weakness. They could have won the
battle with a stronger army, but their very strength would have led them to
boast of their own power, and that would have been their weakness.
God said He made them weak in Judges 7:2, "Lest Israel
vaunt themselves against me, saying, mine own hand hath saved me." It is because of the great danger of pride that
weakness is the way to power. Weakness
leaves us no alternative but to praise God, and give Him all the glory. James Stewart wrote, "It is a thrilling
discovery to make that always it is upon human weakness and humiliation, not
human strength and confidence, that God chooses to build His kingdom; that He
can use us not merely in spite of our ordinariness and helplessness, and
disqualifying infirmities, but precisely because of them."
History has demonstrated the truth of this paradox over and over. The Greeks and Romans hated weakness and
loved strength, and they conquered the world by brut force.Yet, it was the weak
and despised Christians who ministered to the slaves, outcasts, and the masses
of nobodies of the world, who eventually conquered both Greece and Rome, and
carried their values into the future.
In our own country it was the weak and despised Baptists and Methodists
who were driven out of the original colonies by the powerful established churches. These two lowly groups, who ministered to
the weak and uneducated masses, have gone on to become the two most powerful
denominations in the country.
In spite of Scripture, and the facts of history, it is
contrary to our nature to believe this paradox. Paul knew the Old Testament and the man illustrations of the
power of weakness in it, yet he fought submission to it. He did not accept the thorn in the flesh as
a blessing, but prayed earnestly for it to be removed. It is normal and right that our first
response to any weakness, handicap, or limitation, should be to be free of
it. If, however, God will not remove
it, then the only wisdom is to find the power in it, and see the truth of verse
9 demonstrated, which is God's power made perfect in weakness.
God's power is only imperfectly shown in great gifts, for even
the ungodly have great gifts and skills, and it is hard to identify what is
divine from what is human. When God
uses a weak instrument, however, you see clearly that the power is of God. That is why His power is made perfect in
weakness. If an elephant stepped on a
board and it broke,
you would not be
surprised. But if a weak man did it to
rescue someone from a dangerous trap, you would praise God, for it would be
obvious that the power was given to the man from above. If a man of charming personality and a
unique gift of gab persuades someone to come to church, you are not amazed, for
you would expect him to be effective.
But if a person of little ability to communicate brings someone, and they respond to the Gospel,
you are impressed, for
clearly it was luck, or the power of God.
The point is, the power of God is much easier to identify when it is
seen working in weak instruments.
The practical application should be clear. All of us are clearly inadequate, and have
fewer gifts than we wish we had. None
of us are all that we want to be, and so we think we can do very little for the
kingdom of God. The real growth of the
church depends on the gifted few is the common conviction of Christians. Yet, the facts of Scripture and history tell
us that all of us can do great things for God; not because we are able to, but
just because we are not able. It is not
ability, but availability that God wants.
He did not want Moses to take a speech course. He just wanted him to obey, and He would use him. If we could dedicate our weaknesses, and
make ourselves available to God, He could demonstrate in us that His power is
made perfect in weakness.
Catherine Marshall tells of her experience of writing the book
A Man Called Peter. She needed to succeed in this effort, for she left her job
to give to herself to it. About half
way through she asked a trusted friend for his opinion. He said, "The manuscript lacks warmth,
emotion. The facts are here-but not the
heart." She was shattered, and
back in her apartment she threw herself on her bed and cried. Self-pity enveloped her. "I lost my husband in his prime, I have
to raise my son alone, and with no abundance of money, and I am expected to
write a book with no training. How much
can one person take?"
After much struggle she realized she was inadequate, but that
God was not. She prayed the prayer of
helplessness, and asked God to guide her in writing. She got the heart into the book, and masses have been moved to
tears by it. Her achievement, she
knows, was entirely of God's doing, and she has no tendency toward
egocentricity that success can bring.
She writes in her book Beyond Ourselves, "Since then God has never
allowed me the fulfillment of a soul's sincere desire without first putting me
through an acute realization of my inadequacy and my need for help."
There are more women than men on the mission field fulfilling
the great commission,
and, no doubt, one of the reasons
for this is because, as the weaker sex, they tend to be more willing to submit
to God and allow Him to use their weakness.
Men want only to yield their strength.
We are always dedicating our talents, gifts and resources, to Christ,
and rightly so, but we rarely or never dedicate our weaknesses. This is a tragic neglect in the light of the
fact that God can often use them for greater glory. The beauty of dedicating our weaknesses is that we can all do it,
for we all have plenty to give. May God
help us all to surrender our weaknesses, for His strength is made perfect in
weakness.
5.THE PARADOX OF BURDENS Based on Gal. 6:1-10
In South Dakota a man by the name of August had a clothing store
he was going to close up. His was not
one of those perpetual year around closing sales. He was actually intending to go out of business by July. So he hung a sign in his window which read,
The First Of July Is The Last Of August.
Those who did not know the owners name would think the sign was expressing
a meaningless and hopelessly unexplainable contradiction, but for those who
knew his name, the sign conveyed a clear and clever message.
So often an apparent contradiction has a very simple
explanation. This is the case with the many
Biblical paradoxes. Paul has one here
in the last chapter of Galatians that certainly seems on the surface, to be a
flat contradiction. In verse 2 he says,
"Bear one another's burdens," and then in verse 5 he says, "Each
man will have to bear his own burden."
Certainly in three verses Paul had not forgotten what he wrote. But if he did it on purpose, which is
obvious, how can it be that we are to carry one another's burdens, and at the
same time each be stuck with our own load?
One might just as well say, that to be wise we must become
fools, or, to be strong we must become weak.
As a matter of fact, Paul said both of those paradoxes as well. Was Paul
a master at double talk, or was he gifted with the ability to see life from a
wider and wiser perspective than most men?
The latter is the obvious answer. Paul's apparently conspicuous
contradictions, and puzzling paradoxes are the result of his God-given ability
to see the whole of life, and not just some
of its parts in isolation. This
ability was essential for one who represented so authoritatively Him who is the
Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.
What can be more paradoxical than an A which is also a Z, or beginning
which is also an end. This can only be
possible if we are referring to one who is eternal and omnipresent, and who,
therefore, fills all of reality at the same time. This, of course, is precisely the case with God.
Since God's very nature is paradoxical, because it is so all
encompassing it follows that it ought not to be surprising to find that His
revelation partakes of His nature. The
Bible is filled with paradoxes just because it sees life as a whole, and not
just in fragments, as is the case with all merely human philosophy. To conquer we must surrender; to live we
must die; to be exalted we must be humble; to get we must give. God hates the sinner, yet loves the sinner
enough to give His Son for them.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness. Yet, those who drink of the water of life
shall thirst no more. In the last days
there shall come those forbidding to marry.
Yet, in the last days they shall marry and be given in marriage.
On and on goes the list of Biblical paradoxes, each of them
with a valuable lesson to broaden our minds and enlarge our vision of
reality. We want to focus our attention
on this one before us, which deals with burdens. The thing to be aware of is the truth conveyed by paradox, which
is, opposite things can be true of the same thing. A river can be narrow and wide; crooked and straight. From one perspective you may see it go
straight for miles, and then begin to wind for miles.
The word burden has more than one meaning, and depending upon
how you are using it, it can refer to a curse or a blessing. There are burdens in life that no one can
consider good. They are evil, and are
crushing burdens. William G. Clark
referred to such when he wrote,
Oh, there are moments for us
here, when seeing
Life's any qualities, and
woe, and care,
The burdens laid upon our
mortal being
Seems heavier than the human
heart can bear.
The Bible urges us to get rid of these kinds of burdens, for
they are anxieties and cares that are beyond our control. "Casting all your care upon Him, for He careth for you." "Come unto me all ye that labor and are
heavy laden, and I will give you rest."
The burdens of weary,
overworked, and frustrated lives are to be gotten rid of, and refreshment, and
rest are to be found in Christ.
"Cast your burden on the Lord, and He will sustain you." This is certainly one way to look at the
matter of burdens, but God forbid that we think it is the whole truth about
burdens.
What of the Bible's clear demands that we take on
burdens? Take up the cross and follow
me; take my yoke upon you and learn of me.
All the commands of Jesus, and especially the great commission are
commands to take up a burden. Paul adds
to this the burdens we are to bear for one another in fulfilling the law of
Christ. Here is a burden that is among
the loftiest loads we can lift, for to do so fulfills the highest law of all,
which is the law of Christ, which is the law of love.
There is a story concerning a king who once placed a heavy
stone in the middle of the road, and then hid to see who would remove it. Men of various classes came by, and worked
their way around it. Some of them
loudly blaming the king for not keeping the highways clear. They all dodged their duty of getting rid of
it. At last, a peasant on his way to
town with a load of vegetables to sell saw the obstacle, laid down his own
burden, and took on the burden of pushing the bolder off the road. As he did, he saw a purse that had been
placed under it. He examined it, and
found it full of gold, and with a note saying that it was for the one who
removed the stone. Burdens can be a
blessing when they are matters of helping others deal with their burdens. The peasant fulfilled the will of the king
by bearing a burden, and we fulfill the will of our Lord when we bear one
another's burdens. So we see there is
more than one way to look at a burden.
There are the solitary burdens that we must bear alone; the
social burdens that we share, and the senseless burdens that we are to cast
upon the Lord. Paul could have kept
things simple and uncomplicated by just referring to one kind of burden, but he
doesn't do that. He speaks of both the
solitary and the social burden in the same context. He links together our obligation to others, and our personal responsibility. Paul is primarily concerned with believers,
and the bearing of one anothers burdens within the community of faith. The total context, however, is much broader. In fact, in verse 10 Paul makes it clear
that all men are included in our social responsibility. He writes, "As we have opportunity let
us do good to all men, and especially to those who are of the household of
faith."
There are no boundaries to Christian burden bearing. Any good done for any person can be a
fulfillment of this Biblical command, for it is a comprehensive statement, as
broad as the love of God. Within that
general attitude of good will to all, is a specific emphasis on fellow
believers. This is similar to the
statement that Jesus is the Savior of all men, but especially of those who
believe. The love and atonement of
Christ is universal and comprehensive, but only those who believe in Christ,
and receive him as Savior, benefit by being redeemed. There is always both the all, and the few, in Christian relationships. The comprehensive potential, and the limited
actual.
As we study this chapter we want to keep in mind the total
scope of our obligation as far as burden-bearing goes. We have seen there are some burdens we ought
not to bear at all, but in this chapter we see three kinds of burdens we are
obligated to bear. They are, personal
responsibility; social responsibility within the church, and social
responsibility to those outside the church.
6:1 Paul begins by writing, "Brethren if a
man be overtaken in a fault." Here
is the first person who needs a hand with a burden. It is the brother in Christ who has been overtaken by sin. It is not just a fault as the KJV has it,
but a serious trespass. Sin like a leaping lion as overtaking him in
the jungle of life, and has pulled him from the path of purity into the vines
of vice, or the cave of corruption, there to devour him, and to render him
useless as a servant of God. There is
more of this that takes place than we realize.
It is not a rare isolated incident.
Peter warned that Satan like a roaring lion walks about seeking whom he
may devour, but here is a brother who did not heed the warning.
Paul was not blind, for he knows a Christian brother or sister
can be overtaken by some sin. Like John
the beloved Apostle, he knows if we say we have no sin we deceive
ourselves. John made provision for the
Christians in sin, and said, if we confess it Jesus is faithful to forgive
it. Paul gets into the social aspect of
sin. Sometimes sin is not just a
private matter you can confess and be done with it. Sometimes it has social implications,
and becomes a public matter,
and a heavy burden. There is blame and
shame, and a need for more than God's forgiveness. There is also a need for the acceptance of the body. The world is full of people who know God
loves them, and has forgiven them, but who are cut off from the fellowship of
the church, because the body paid no attention to what Paul is saying
here. We are social beings, and if we
don't get social acceptance and restoration to fellowship, we are like branches
cut off from the tree, and we wither and bear no fruit.
I remember a silly story I use to tell as a teen. It is about a farmer who was throwing purple
powder on his field, and when he was asked what he was doing by a neighbor he
said, "I'm throwing this lion powder on my land. It is suppose to keep lions away." The neighbor protested, "But there ain't any lions within a
thousand miles from here." He
responded, "I know, and its a good thing too, cause I bet this stuff don't
work." Silly, but no more so than
the Christian who knows he can't face Satan alone on his own ground, and yet,
who sprinkles his life with the purple powder of self reliance, and walks right
into the lion's jaws.
You know, as well as I do that the reason so many are being
devoured by the lion of lust in our day is because they park in his den. Even as a child of God you never know what
you might do if the circumstances are right.
Therefore, do not be a fool, but stay away from the lion's den. Every man has his Achilles heel, and Satan
throws a pretty good spear, so stay out of range. But some will not listen, and will go down, and this is the man
Paul is concerned about here. He
addresses those he expects to act on the matter as, "Ye which are
spiritual." That which is to
characterize them is a compassion and a concern for a fallen brother. Some would think the spiritual ones should
be the ones raking him over the coals of condemnation. There are those who feel they are spiritual
who like to show their contempt for the fallen, and they add more mud to the
mess that already is. The obligation of
the truly spiritual is neither to condemn or condone the sinner, but to act in
a practical way to offset the victory of sin, and restore the victim.
Every soldier counts in the army of Christ, and none are to be
left lying helpless and wounded on the battlefield. One of the obvious influences of Christianity on the American
culture is the high value we place on the individual life. We go all out at home or in battle to rescue
and save one lost child, or one wounded soldier. This in contrast to what a Dr. Pearson told us at a Civil Air
Patrol meeting. He was in China during
World War II. The Chinese army did not
have any medics, because it was too expensive, so if a man was wounded and
could not go on, they removed his uniform and left him. They would go on to the next village where
the first man they found to fit the uniform was drafted. The life of an individual wasn't worth a
penny. Not so in our culture, and not
so even more in the Christian battle.
No soldier of the cross ever ought to ever be given into the hands of
the enemy, but be restored to the company of the faithful.
Those who are quick to condemn, not only give aid and comfort
to the enemy, but make it hard for the wounded brother to get back to his own
lines. To carry out the analogy, it is
like a wounded soldier in no mans land trying to get back to his company, but
his own men are raking the area with machine gun fire. Just as some Americans die at the hands of
their own men because of error, so the church, if it does not follow Paul's
pattern, can drive men out of the church.
The number of people who no longer go to church, because of
self-righteous condemnation, is legion.
Many churches and individuals have failed to be channels of the mercy and
forgiveness of Christ, because they refused to bear the burden of a fallen brethren. They left him with the whole load until it
broke the back of his faith, and he fell crushed, never to rise again. As terrible as it is for what the Chinese
did, it is even worse for Christians to do the same on the spiritual level.
To bear this burden is not easy. To share his guilt and shame for deserting the captain of his
faith is hard. No one likes to be
identified with a deserter, but this is a burden we can only escape by
ourselves being deserters of our Lord's orders. This is not a burden we can cast on the Lord, for it is a part of
our obligation to a brother in Christ.
If we lift it, we will discover it is one of those burdens that is a
blessing. "My yolk is easy and
burden is light," said Jesus. This
is it, the bearing of one anothers burden, and so fulfilling the law of
Christ. The saint of India, Sundar
Singh once crossed the mountains of Tibet during a heavy snowstorm. He was joined by a stranger, and they were
companions in misfortune.
The cold was so intense they
feared they would not make it. They
found a man who had fallen off the path to a ledge below. He was unconscious and Sundar asked his
companion
to help him rescue the
man. He said it would be foolish to try
and he went off on his own.At the risk of his life Sundar got to the man, and
struggled back to the path carrying him.He later found his former companion
frozen, but he was able to stay alive because his extra exertion of carrying
the body. He was able to reach a village
and survive because he was willing to carry a burden.
Why should children bear the burden of picking up clothes,
making the bed, etc., if mom will bear that burden for them? The most irresponsible people in the world
are created when someone else bears all of their burdens. Young women make poor housewives when they
are not taught to bear the burdens of running a household. It is curse to escape such burdens, for it
is burden bearing that makes people responsible citizens. There are burdens you want others to help
you bear, but there are many that you need to bear alone to become the kind of
person God wants you to be.
James Gilkey tells of watching workman on the street of New
York city carrying a long awkward plank.
The wind kept blowing it, and as it would swing back and forth, he would
lose his stride and weave back and forth.
Another man came up behind and saw his problem, and without a word he
eased his shoulder under the back end of the plank. The workman was ignorant of what was happening. He steadied his step, and quickened his
pace, and quickly arrived at his destination.
His undetected helper slipped from under the load, and continued on his
way. The workman never even knew he had
been helped with his burden. Our Lord
does this for us, and we receive a helping hand we never even see.
We can do this type of
lifting as well, and give a silent and secret lift to those with burdens.
However we do it, we should all be in the business of burden bearing.
CHAPTER 6.THE PARADOX OF BLESSING BASED ON GAL.6:1-10
Doing your best could be the worst thing you could do. That sounds like a contradiction, but it can
be explained so that it makes sense as a paradox. A paradox is a statement, which at first sight seems absurd, and
contrary to common sense, but which can be explained so as to be well grounded
and true in fact. It is not hard to
figure out the paradox in the statement that the new cars are wider, longer,
lower, and higher. That they are lower
in relation to the ground, and higher in relation to your bank account is easy
to see. Many paradoxes are not so
obvious. Some of the beatitudes of
Jesus, for example are paradoxes.
Blessed are the poor in spirit; blessed are those who mourn, and blessed
are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake. These need some deeper thinking before the clouds of obscurity
will clear away, and let the light of truth shine through.
So it is with the statement, doing your best can be the worst
thing you can do. It is contrary to a
normal pattern of thinking, but all it takes is one illustration to turn it
into a paradoxical statement of truth.
A minister of a large church had his assistant preach the sermon on
Sunday morning. He wanted to slip away
to play golf. He drove the ball with
terrific accuracy, and everything he did seem to go perfect, and he finished
the 18 holes with a remarkable 68. It
was the first time he ever broke 100.
He was over joyed and elated until it struck him, he would never be able
to tell anyone about it because of the circumstances. Had he played an average game, there would be nothing to tell,
but he had gone and done his very best, and now he couldn't share his
excitement. Doing his best under those
circumstances proved to be the worst thing he could do. His great pleasure paradoxically became his
punishment.
Doing your best at any act of evil is always the worst thing
you can do. The thing to notice about
the nature of paradox is that it keeps you aware of the complexity of
reality. It keeps you aware of the
danger of oversimplification. We tend
to take a legitimate aspect of reality and make it the whole. Paradox forces us to keep an open mind, and
seek to reconcile contradictory aspects of life. The Christian who cannot accept paradox as part of reality will
often be distressed, because life refuses to conform to the logic of what he
feels ought to be. Everything can make
sense, however, to one who is willing to see the paradoxical nature of
reality.
A blessed curse sounds
like nonsense, but a little thought can make it a precious truth. The Scripture says, "Cursed is every
man who is hung upon a tree."
Jesus was hung upon a tree, and crucified for our sin. His curse became the means by which all of
our sins are forgiven. Who can think of
a curse that ever led to greater blessings?
It was indeed a blessed curse, and no longer a statement of nonsense. I emphasize the reality of paradox because
Paul is so paradoxical in this passage of Gal. 6. The paradox we want to consider concerns a blessing we are to
avoid. It sounds unreasonable to even
suggest that we should try and avoid one of God's blessings, but that is
exactly what God's expects us to do, and exactly what we want to do when we
understand the meaning of the paradox.
No one will doubt that guilt is one of the heaviest burdens a
man can bear, and no one will doubt that forgiveness is one of the most
precious of all blessings. Yet, as blessed
as it is to be lifted, it is more blessed never to have fallen. The blessing we are to avoid, therefore, is
the blessing of being the one who is restored through forgiveness. While helping the fallen experience this
blessing, we are to be careful to avoid it ourselves. It is a blessing that can only come through first disobeying
God. To be eligible for forgiveness we
must first sin, and, therefore, this is a blessing we are to avoid.
A Sunday School teacher asked her class what is the first
thing we must do to obtain forgiveness of sin?
A little boy spoke up and said, "Sin!" It was not the expected answer, but a
correct one, and because they only way to obtain this goal is by the route of
evil, it is a way we are not to travel.
It is a blessing we are never to chose, but one we are to receive only
because of necessity due to the fact that we have fallen.
In this first verse Paul is just as concerned that the
non-fallen Christian helper escape the necessity of this blessing, as he is
that the fallen brother find it. It is
wonderful that the fallen brother can be restored and forgiven. Yet, it would be a tragedy if another in
helping him bear his load fell himself, and needed to travel the same path. Forgiveness is the only road to travel when
one is in the valley of sin, and it is a great blessing, but it is a curse to
fall into that valley in the first place, and so it is a blessing to be
avoided. Any blessing that requires you
to sin before receiving it, is a blessing to avoid. This is why Paul limits the task of restoring the fallen to the
spiritual, that is to those who have developed the maturity necessary to do the
job without risking themselves.
Anyone who has tackled a difficult job with inadequate tools
knows the problem you can get into, and the mess you can make. The tool one must have to effectively
restore a fallen brother is the tool of meekness, or gentleness. It is one of the fruits of the Spirit, and
that is why Paul calls upon those who are spiritual to handle this delicate
matter. To be spiritual simply means to
be one who exhibits the fruits of the Spirit.
If one does not have this fruit, he should not attempt the job of
restoration. The result could be something
like trying to fix a piece of broken china with a hammer. Christians need to leave delicate jobs to
those whose inner tool chest has in it, not the sharp saw of severity, and the
hard hammer of harshness, but the smooth sander of sympathy, and the mild
mallet of meekness.
The word restore is the Greek word for setting a dislocated
bone. Part of the body of Christ is
dislocated when a Christian falls into sin.
There is bound to be some pain in getting him restored, but the proper
treatment can eliminate unnecessary pain.
The proper treatment that Paul calls for is gentleness. Calvin wrote, "We are here taught to
correct the faults of brethren in a mild manner, and to consider no rebukes as
partaking a religious and Christian character which do not breathe the spirit
of meekness." Not all can lift a
fallen brother by meekness, and so they should keep their hands off.
To try and restore a brother in the attitude of arrogant
superiority is to fall into the category of those Paul mentions in verse 3 who think
themselves to be something when they are nothing. Here is another paradox:
To be something we must recognize we are nothing. John Wesley recognized he was nothing apart
from Christ, and he really became something.
He lifted gamblers, drunkards, and rough sinners from all walks of life
by the power of gentleness. G. W.
Langford wrote-
Speak gently! Tis a little thing
Dropped in the heart's deep well;
The good, the joy that it
may bring
Eternity shall tell.
If you don't have the tools, leave the task of restoring to
those who can do it in the spirit of meekness.
A Christian doing good in the wrong way can do more harm than good. The Christian who has the right tools,
however, ought not to be deceived into thinking he is immune to danger. There is always a risk involved in bending
over a pit to lift another out. It is
possible for the helper to end up in the pit.
Paul,
therefore, gives a warning
even to those who are spiritual. It is
a blessing to know they can be restored if they fall, but it is a blessing they
are to avoid.
I think it is extremely important that we see Paul's attitude
concerning the Christian and sin. Paul
feels that no one is ever so mature, and so spiritual, that they can afford to
be careless. Paul assumes that the
finest Christians can fall if they are not cautious. To think that a wonderful Christian cannot fall into serious sin
is to be ignorant concerning spiritual warfare. Some people blame emotionalism for the fact that Christians fall
into sin. They feel that many
conversions are only a momentary experience of excitement that do not
last. Others feel the problem lies with
those churches which stress conversion as a process of education. These, they say, are not truly born again,
and have only a head knowledge, and that is why they fall to the
temptation. Both are right, and there
are many illustrations to prove their point, but both are wrong in thinking
they can explain, by their view, why Christians sin.
The method by which one comes to Christ is not the determining
factor at all. The important thing is
what one thinks of himself after he does accept Christ. If he thinks he is now safe from the enemy
of his soul, and has arrived, he is in serious trouble. His deception at this point will leave him
wide open to enemy attack. If he
realizes the battle has just begun, and that now, more than ever, he needs the
whole armor of God, and much caution, then he is likely to stand, and be a good
soldier of Christ. It is pride that leads
the Christian to fall, for the proud Christian no longer fears his own
weakness. He feels he does not need to
be careful in the way he walks. It is
the humble Christian who will stand, for he is fully aware of his weakness, and
the danger of falling.
Paul makes it clear that the most mature Christian must be
aware that the tendency to sin is still in them, and that a proud and careless
attitude can lead them into the very pit they hope to lift others out of. An honest Christian is one who is able to
say, I am capable of committing that very sin that ensnared my brother. Therefore, I must avoid certain
circumstances. Consider thyself is what
Paul says.
Keep and attentive eye on
yourself is another version. Help
another with an attitude of pride, thinking you are superior because you did
not fall, and you could very well be the next one there pulling out of the pit.
History is full of spiritual persons who are naive at this
point. The Bible does not give useless
warnings, and so we need to take them seriously. In I Cor. 10:12 Paul says, "Therefore let anyone who thinks
he stands take heed lest he fall."
David was a man after God's own heart, but he fell. Peter was the leader of the Apostles, but he
fell. You can go through the list of
Bible heroes, and the same can be said for just about all of them. The wise Christian agrees with the ancient
saying, "Know thyself." To be
ignorant of what you are capable of doing is to be blind, and not having an
honest knowledge of yourself, and this will lead you to ignore the warnings
that would help you to escape when the battle is more than you can handle.
Tis one
of human nature's laws,
To see ourselves without our
flaws.
This is one law we are to break, and not submit to being
blinded by our nature which loves to be deceived about our defects. If we are not honest with ourselves, we will
fail to see ourselves in the mirror of God's Word. We will be like the dog who always went wild when he saw his
reflection in the mirror. He thought is
was another dog, and he was ready for a fight.
If we think all the warnings of Scripture are directed to someone else,
we are as foolish as that dog. The
heart is deceitful above all things, and we need to see that refers to our
heart, and not just the heart of others.
Fenelon said, "As light increases we see ourselves to be worse than
we thought." The purpose of seeing
yourself as you are is not to give you a guilt complex, but to show you just how weak you are without the Lord's
help. It is to keep you alert, knowing
that a sudden attack can take you by surprise and leave you wounded.
Look to yourself says Paul; know yourself; know your own
weakness and tendency to sin, and you will be more useful in gaining back the
fallen brother, for your caution and stability will increase his security, and
give him an example to follow in the future.
This is doing for a brother what Jesus did for us all. Had He not stopped to lift us, and had He
not faced all temptations and remained sinless, we would have no hope, and no
security, and no basis for forgiveness.
Nietzsche thought this was the way to produce a world of
weaklings. The strong ought not to
stoop to help the weak, he said. This
puts them all on the dead level of mediocrity.
The strong are to move on higher, and step on the weak to do it. This is the only road to the super
race. Hitler and Stalin both put this
philosophy into practice, and history has recorded the tragic results. One of the paradoxes of history is that
power and might does not conquer in any lasting way. What is gains, soon crumbles.
Eternal victories are gained by love, which is willing to stoop and
lift. Gentleness which is willing to
put up with the weaknesses of men, and seek to lead them to higher ground, is
the way to build what is lasting. If
Christians cooperate, they can turn an apparent victory for evil into a final
victory for good. Let the fall of a
brother in Christ teach you caution, and your caution will teach him how to
avoid another fall, and both will be better prepared to not experience the
blessing we are to avoid.
CHAPTER 7 .THE PARADOX OF PRIDE
Based on Gal. 6:3
Some people, probably most people, and maybe all people have to
learn how to be humble the hard way, and that is the humpty dumpty way of having a great fall. This was the case with Max Eastman. A film was being made on the life of Christ,
and he happened to meet the well known woman photographer working on that film,
who was Alice Baughton. Shortly after
this meeting he received a note asking if he would consent to pose with
Walter Hampden, the man playing the
role of Christ, in one of the miracle scenes.
He was so proud of getting such an offer after just a casual meeting,
that he could not help but brag. A
thing like that couldn't just happen, he must have something on the ball. He said to his mother who was visiting at
the time, "See what it is to be a beauty.
I just knock them cold at the first sight." When he returned from the studio, however,
his glow had turned to gloom.
"What did you pose for?"
Was the eager question of the family.
Meekly he replied, "The corpse of Lazarus."
Lazarus was certainly not unimportant role to play, even as a
corpse, but it hardly justified his boast of superior beauty. Had he not opened his mouth, there could
only be merit in getting any part at all, but he did, and proved the saying
true, "And ounce of vanity spoils a hundred weight of merit." He thought too highly of himself. He was like the man whose wife said to him
as they left the party, "Has anyone ever told you how marvelous you are?" "No, I don't believe they have,"
he said. "Well then," she
continued, "Where in the world did you ever get the idea?"
The idea comes natural, for the one thing most all people have
in common is their loyal love of themselves.
E. W. Howe said, "When a man tried himself, the verdict is usually
in his favor." Subconsciously, if
not consciously, all men tend to make themselves the center of the
universe. Each of us is, to a lesser or
greater degree, an I specialist. I read
of a printing company that had to postpone the publication of a Bishop's
autobiography because of they ran out of capital I's. Pope wrote in his essay on man-
Ask for what end the
heavenly bodies shine,
Earth for whose use, -Pride
answers,-Tis for mine;
For me kind nature wakes her
genial power,
Suckles each herb, and
spreads out every flower;
Sees role to waft me, suns
to light me rise;
My foot stool earth, my
canopy the skies.
There is a touch of truth even in this self-centeredness, for
man alone was made by God with the capacity to appreciate and enjoy the order
and beauty of His creation, and man was given dominion over creation. But man fell, like Satan, because of pride,
and is now, as Pascal put it, both the glory and the scum of the universe. He still has some basis for pride, but so
much more for humility and shame.
Abraham Lincoln's favorite hymn by William Knox put it this way-
Oh, why should the spirit of
mortal be proud?
Like a swift-flitting
meteor, a fast-flying cloud,
A flash of the lightning, a
break of the wave,
He passeth from life to his
rest in the grave.
Man is in a strange predicament, caught between his own
dignity and depravity; his own worth, and his wickedness. The result is another great paradox of
life. Man's self-love is both an evil
and a good. It is both an essential for
a happy life in God's will, and the main cause for most evil that is out of
God's will. Paul in this great chapter
on paradoxes deals with both sides of pride.
In verse 3, he deals with that kind of pride which makes a man
think himself to be something when he is nothing. In verse 4, he deals with that kind of pride which is an honest
recognition of one's worth before God.
The border line between these two is so close, and so poorly defined,
that one can every easily slip over into exhibiting evil pride when he thinks
he is being rightfully humble. This
makes pride a very dangerous area that Satan takes advantage of. Ruskin said, "In general pride is at
the bottom of all great mistakes!"
This is true of sin as well.
The Old Testament says so much about the evil and folly of
pride we cannot even begin to cover it.
The New Testament is sufficient to establish it as one of the worse
evils of the human heart. Jesus lists it
as one of the major evils that proceed from the heart in Mark 7:22. Paul lists it among the dominating
depravities of the pagan world in Rom. 1:30.
He also lists it as one of the characteristics of men in the last
days. He writes in II Tim. 3:2, "For
men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive,
disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy." Both Peter and James write that, "God resisteth the proud
but gives grace to the humble."
Christians are urged to avoid pride, and all her ugly sisters like
conceit, arrogance, and haughtiness.
Paul says in Rom. 12:16,
"Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with
the lowly; never be conceited."
Pride among Christian is the greatest cause for lack of
harmony, and in our text Paul says, the brother or sister in Christ who is proud,
and thinks they are something when they are nothing, deceives themselves. They do not fool anyone else, but they are
themselves blind to the fact that they are the problem, and are being dupes of
the devil to hinder the work of Christ.
Paul says, something can become nothing, or somebody can become
nobody. Something becomes nothing when
it fails to fulfill the purpose for which it exists. For example, you have all had an experience like this. Suppose my son and I were walking along the
road, and he picks up a broken piece of metal, and asks me what it is. I look at it, and see that it is from a
machine of some kind, and is no longer able to serve the function for which it
was made, like a burned out fuse for example.
I therefore, say to him, "It is nothing, throw it away." Now we both know it is something, for it
exists, or he wouldn't have asked the question, but by calling it nothing I
meant it is worthless in fulfilling its purpose, and so has no value
whatever.
Jesus said, "When salt loses it power to be salty it is
good for nothing." It is still
something, but as far as usefulness goes, it is nothing. Something is nothing when it can no longer
function for the purpose of which it exists.
You've all heard of the two boys who were bragging, and the one son
said, "My father is a doctor, I can be sick for nothing." The other one responded, "Well, my
father is a minister, and I can be good for nothing." Paul is saying, that it is literally
possible for a Christian to be good for nothing. If a Christian thinks he is too good to help another Christian
lift their burden, he has allowed pride to render him useless in fulfilling the
law of Christ, and so at that point he is nothing. He is still something, or there would be no point of warning him
of his danger, but he salt without flavor, and if he does not lose his sinful
pride, he will lose his usefulness as a Christian.
A Christian who cannot inner into the bearing of one another's
burdens because of pride is not able to fulfill a basic purpose in the
Christian life. He is about as valuable
as a burned out fuse. Paul is simply
spelling out in a practical way the teaching of I Cor. 13. He wrote there, that if he had the tongues
of angels, and the gift of prophecy, and great knowledge and wisdom, and faith
to remove mountains, and did not have love, he would be nothing. It is hard to believe that so much
somethings can equal absolutely nothing, but this is what Paul clearly teaches. Without love a Christian can be nothing, in
the sense that he would be useless for the cause of Christ. This is why pride is such a great danger to
the believer, for it can render him useless.
In Psa. 62:9 David says, "...men of high estate are a delusion, in
the balances they go up; they are altogether lighter than a breath." Paul goes even further, and says they are
not only lighter than air, they are nothing, but either way, the two testaments
agree, pride can make a man weightless, and unable to exert even an ounce of
weight on the scale for good.
The tragedy is that this is not just a hypothetical
possibility, but is an actual reality.
This was the case with the lukewarm majority in the church of Laodicea. In Rev. 3:17 Jesus says to these Christians
who are neither hot nor cold, "Because thou sayest, I am rich, and
increased with goods, and have need of nothing, and knowest not that thou are
wretched, and miserable, and blind and naked." They thought they were something when they were nothing. They deceived themselves into thinking they
needed nothing, but in reality, they needed everything. Paul gives another example of this deception
of pride in I Tim. 6:3-4. "If
anyone teaches otherwise and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord
Jesus Christ and the teaching which accords with godliness, he is puffed up
with conceit, and knows nothing."
Here is a man who thinks he is so wise he can go beyond the words of
Christ. He thinks he knows something,
but Paul says, what he knows is nothing.
Here is the paradox that runs all through the Bible. He who exalts himself shall be brought
low. The Tower of Babel is the great
symbol of human pride. When man seeks
to climb to the sky, he ends groveling in the dirt. When he seeks to go to heaven by self-exaltation, he lands in
hell. When he thinks himself to be
something, he is nothing. This passage
is extremely relevant to all of us.
Obedience is vital to our very existence as useful Christians. Bearing one another's burdens is not just a
suggestion, it is a demand-do it or else.
Here is a law in the midst of grace.
A Christian who is not fulfilling the law of Christ is not fulfilling
the purpose for which he exists.
This can be hard, and especially when the burden is the result
of sin. These are the worst, for it is
easy to get your hands dirty, and even your soul, if you are not careful, as
Paul warns. Paul knew some Christians
would be hesitant on this matter, and would not want to risk spotting their
lily white hands in pulling a fallen brother out of the pit. He made his bed, let him lie in it, would be
their attitude. After all says the
proud Christian, "I am something.
I am a leader in the church. I
have a reputation of respectability in the community. I can't get involved in helping some fool brother who has gotten
himself in a mess. What will people
think of me? They might think I approve
of his sin, or that I help because I am guilty of the same. I just can't risk the association and spoil
my reputation."
This proud man's case is clear, and his concern for his
self-image is natural, but the Christian who wants to be used of God cannot
afford to be natural, for the paradox is,
his very caution is his
greatest folly. In saving his
reputation with men, he loses the favor of God. He remain something before men, he becomes nothing before
God. Paul wants us to see this folly,
and never allow pride to keep us from our duty to bear one another's burdens,
and so fulfill the law of Christ. A
Christian who cannot risk his reputation to rescue another Christian from the
grasp of the enemy is as good as a partner of the enemy, and so of no value in
the cause of Christ. Another
paradoxical consequence of this is that when a Christian becomes nothing
because of pride, and is lighter than air, and has no weight at all in the
scale for good, he makes a heavy impact on the scale for evil. When the love of Christ is absent in a
follower of Christ he becomes a useful tool in the hands of Satan.
Alexander Maclaren said, "Depend upon it, heresy has less
power to arrest the progress of the church than the selfish lives of Christian
professors." Nothing is so heavy,
and such a drag on the church, as lighter than air Christians, whose pride
makes them useless for good. These
lighter than air Christians are paradoxically the heaviest burden the church
has to bear. God forbid that we be
among these spiritual naughts by being proud, loveless, and unconcerned about
the burdens of others. Let us also be
aware of the subtlety of pride. It is a
two edged sword which cuts both ways.
It hides on both sides of the narrow way, and we can fall into to its
snare in the very act of backing away.
For example, what is our attitude to those whom Paul calls
nothing? What of the proud loveless
brother? Does he not immediately become
one of the fallen brothers who needs the help of the spirit-lead believer in
order to be restored. In other words,
this something which has become nothing can also be restored back to something,
and become useful again in the cause of Christ. His pride which kept him away from the pit lest he be stained,
has plunged him into even a muckier pit yet, up to his neck. He has fallen lower than the brother he
refused to help, but now he needs a hand, and if we refuse him because he is
unworthy of our help, we are only copying his folly, and we will fall into the
pit ourselves.
It is no advance on the Pharisee who said, "I thank God I
am not as other men, even this Publican," to say, "I thank God I am
not as other men, even this Pharisee."
A Sunday School teacher after teaching the lesson of the proud Pharisee
said, "Let's bow now and thank God we are not like this Pharisee." Pride is subtle, and it can get you coming
or going. It is present everywhere, and
at all times. One Puritan lamented that
ridding ourselves of pride is like peeling an onion, for every skin taken off
there is another beneath. The first
step to victory over pride is to be aware that it is a clever foe, and the
battle will never cease while we are in the flesh. Second, we must overcome evil with good. We must learn how to harness this
inescapable characteristic of human life for good. We need to use this which can make us nothing before God, to make
us something of which we can be proud, and which God can use for the purpose
for which He made us.
CHAPTER 8. PRAISEWORTHY
PRIDE Based on Gal. 6:4
One of the most common
paradoxes of history is the paradox of succeeding through failure. Jesus failed to turn Israel from her sins, and
they crucified Him, but He thereby succeeded in paying the penalty for their
sin, and also for the sins of the world.
By descending into the valley of failure, He arrived at the peak of
success. The cross became both the low
point, and the high point of history.
There are numerous illustrations of this paradox. A contemporary example comes from the
experience of Dr. Paul Tournier, the well known Christian physician of Switzerland,
whose many books are very popular in America.
In his book The Adventure Of Living, he tells of a lecture he
gave at a University. He felt from the
beginning of the lecture that he was not going to make contact with his
audience. He clung to his notes, and
laboriously recited with growing nervousness. When he finished, he saw his friends slipping away to spare both
he and themselves the embarrassment of meeting. On the way home in the car his wife burst into tears because the
humiliation was so great. It was the
most miserable lecture he had ever given.
The next day a professor of philosophy called him on the phone. He said he had listened to a large numbers
of lectures in his life, and had never heard one as bad as Dr. Tournier's. The very dullness of it, however, intrigued
him, and he wanted to meet Dr. Tournier.
This was the beginning of wonderful friendship that resulted in this
professor receiving Christ as his Savior.
Dr. Tournier said, this was the source of more lasting joy to him than
if he had delivered a brilliant lecture.
It was his impressive failure that opened the door to the thrilling
success of winning a man for Christ.
Praise God that He can use even our failure for His glory.
Let us not, however,
strive to fail, and seek to be nothing in the hope that God will use it to make
us successful and something. The
Christian never deliberately aims for anything but the best. Success is always to be his goal. Set your affections on things above; press
on toward the mark for the prize; run to win; fight the good fight for victory;
whatever you do, do it as unto the Lord, give of your best to the Master, and
no less. The Christian never chooses to
run poorly, but strives always for excellence.
The result of this, of
course, will be that Christians will arrive at the goal of success by the
normal route of fulfilling the requirements for success. It is then that they face the danger of
failure, and can become an example of the paradox of failing through success. It they let success to go their head, and
become proud and boastful, they cease to be useful instruments for the glory of
God, and so they fail in their highest goal.
This is what Paul was warning against in verse 3. The Christian who does not fall, but has by
persistence in good habits, and development of self-control, resisted
temptation, can still fail if he allows pride to make him think he is really
something, even too good to help the fallen brother.
Many Christians, seeing the danger of pride in success, fall
into the opposite danger of a false humility, nothing is more superficial and
unspiritual than when one who has done an excellent thing pretends that it is
really nothing at all. This is not
humility but sheer falsehood, or deception.
A Christian who excels in some aspect of life cannot honestly pretend
that he is a dud. If a Christian boy
holds the world's record for the 100 yard dash he would appear silly if he
pretended to think he was not very fast.
Karl Olsson writes, "How many excellently cooked dinners have been
dismissed by humble housewives as nullities, a mere hogwash-because these
estimable ladies thought it sinful to admit that they were the best chicken
roasters in 7 counties, which, in effect, they knew themselves to
be."
Christians can even come to the point where they are proud of
their humility, and get great satisfaction in pretending to be nothing, and
incapable of anything praiseworthy.
This pretense at failure only succeeds in making them failures while
they are succeeding. This kind of
humility is only a more subtle form of pride.
I am that voice which is the
faint
First, far-off sin within
the saint,
When of his humbleness he
first
Takes thought, and I become
that thirst
Which makes him drunken with
his own
Humbleness, and so casts him
down
From the last painful stair
that waits
His triumphing feet at
heaven's gates.
In other words, false
humility will cause the Christian to fall just as sure as false pride.
Both extremes are foolish
and dangerous, for neither of them is honest, and neither is based on a
realistic evaluation of one's self in relation to God.
It was sheer madness for Nietzsche, in great pride, to say,
"It is only since I have come that a new hope has dawned on
earth." But Madam DuDeffond did
not lessen the madness when she wrote, "I hear nothings, I speak nothings,
I take interest in nothing, and from nothing to nothing I travel gently down
the dull way which leads to becoming nothing." This is not humility, but pure pessimism and despair which is
totally unfit as a Christian attitude.
The Christian alternative to self-deification is not self-damnation, but self-dedication. God does not want your self deified or
damned, He wants it dedicated. Paul
says, you are deceived if you think you are something when you are nothing, but
you are equally deceived if you think you are nothing when you are
something. Paul is not trying to get
Christians to think of themselves as nothing, for that is an evil. It is unworthy of a child of God, who has
been redeemed by the precious blood of Christ and given eternal life. So both pride and humility can be dangerous,
but both are still needed for the balanced Christian life.
Soren Kierkegaard, the great Danish theologian, stood on a
hilltop overlooking the sea one summer evening, and he had this
experience. "As I stood there
alone and forsaken and the might of the sea and the war of the elements brought
my own nothingness to mind, and on the other hand the secure flight of the birds
brought to mind the words of Christ, 'Not a sparrow falls to the ground without
the will of your heavenly Father,' I felt all at once how great and how small I
was, and the two great powers, pride and humility, joined hands and became
friends." This is the Biblical
solution of the problem: A reconciliation
of pride and humility, so that together as friends they can do what neither can
do alone. Pride alone is a great evil,
but mixed with humility it becomes a praise worthy pride. This is the kind of pride that keeps one
from the sin of false humility.
Abraham Lincoln said, "I desire to so conduct the affairs
of this administration that,
when I come to lay down the
reins of power, if I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at least
have one friend left, the one down inside me." Lincoln wanted to be right within himself. He preferred the approval of the still small
voice within, rather than the cheers of the crowd. Lincoln may not have studied Paul's advice here in Gal. 6:4, but
he was following it, and that is why Lincoln was such a great, yet humble man,
of whom so many have been proud. The
key to a humble, or praiseworthy, pride says Paul is self-examination. The amplified version reads, "But let
every person carefully scrutinize and examine and test his own conduct and his
own work. He can then have the personal
satisfaction and joy of doing something commendable (in itself alone) without
(resorting to) boastful comparison with his neighbor."
A legitimate pride is a completely personal matter, and does not
depend upon anyone else. It is a matter
of personal satisfaction in accomplishing something that is praiseworthy. False pride is dangerous for the paradoxical
reason that it is not self-centered enough.
False pride does not examine the self for intrinsic worth and value, but
is all the time comparing the self with others. False pride finds the false, defects, and sins in others, and
then by comparison exalts the self. All
their boasting depends upon the falls of others, rather than any intrinsic value
in themselves. If you boast because you
did not fall like this brother, your goodness is only comparative, and
comparative goodness is not Christian goodness. God will never judge anyone by
comparison. Anybody can find
someone worse than themselves, and deceive themselves into thinking they are
good in comparison. This is foolish
pride, and many live on a very low level just because they are proud that it is
higher than others on a lower level.
Paul says, do not think you are something when you are
nothing, just because, even as nothing you have not fallen as low as
another. Stop this business of
comparing, and get into the business of self-examination. Washington Allston said, "The only
competition worthy of a wise man is with himself." This is Paul's idea here. We are not running well just because we are
ahead of the cripples. Our competition
is to be with ourselves, and not the slowest runner we can find. Examine your own work says Paul. How does it rate in itself, regardless of
what anyone else has or has not done.
Paul says in Rom. 14:12, "Each of us shall give account of himself
to God." It is not a comparative
account. It is not, how did you do
compared to so and so, but what did you do compared to what you knew you ought
to do? How does your action measure up
to your knowledge?
If you examine yourself, and are honest, you will likely have
a great deal to be humble about. If you
really are running at full speed, and are pressing on toward the mark, your
reason for boasting will be legitimate, for it will be based on yourself alone,
and not on the slower speed of a neighbor, or brother in Christ. Paul, like Lincoln, was concerned about
living with himself, and Paul could boast publicly before the Jewish council in
Acts 23:1, "Brethren, I have lived before God in all good conscious up to
this day." In II Cor. 1:12 he
writes, "For our boast is this, the testimony of our conscience that we
have behaved in the world, and still more toward you, with holiness and godly
sincerity..." We could give many
other examples of Paul's boasting in himself, because of this clear conscience,
and self-respect. Paul had a
praiseworthy pride because of his honest testing of his character and conduct
against the standard of Christ, and not that of the world, or other
Christians. Be followers of me as I am
of Christ, Paul could say.
Paul was proud to be a Christian, and a child of God, and a
servant of Christ. He was not ashamed of
the cross or the Gospel, but he was proud of it, and gloried in the cross. Yet, he never forgot he was unworthy, and
was only allowed to do so because of the grace of God. He called himself the least of all saints,
but because of God's grace,
he could also call himself
one of the greatest Apostles. Paul,
like his Master, was both humble and proud.
Jesus did not hesitate to proclaim publically His wisdom and knowledge,
yet none was so humble as Jesus.
Praiseworthy pride, and healthful humility were fast friends in the
makeup of their personalities.
They could have the highest self-respect, because themselves
were in harmony with God's objective revelation. They did not go by comparison with others, but by their own personal
relationship to God. Jesus, even as the
Son of God, had a human nature.
He had personal
responsibility He had to bear. He had a
load to bear that none could help Him bear, and Jesus had to examine His own
work, and have rejoicing in His fulfillment of His Father's will. He could say at the end, "It is
finished." He did the work He was
sent to do. Paul could also say at the
end that he had fought a good fight, and ran a good race. This sense of personal satisfaction of a job
well done, and a life well lived, is to be the precious blessing of every child
of God. Arthur Clough wrote,
He who would climb and soar
aloft
Must needs keep ever at his
side
The tonic of a wholesome
pride.
Yes, even pride, that can be
the rag of rottenness, can also, by the grace of God be woven into the robe of
righteousness, and become praiseworthy pride.
9.GOOD OUT OF EVIL Based on Phil. 1:12-26
Luther Burbank, the world famous scientist, worked for years to
try and develop a black-petaled lily.
He had several thousand experimental lily plants in his laboratory. A sudden cloudburst let loose a flood of
rain that they were all washed away.
William Stidger tells of sympathizing with him over what had happened,
and Burbank said to him , "When
anything like this happens I always remember a little couplet my mother use to
quote:
From the day you are born
Till you ride in a hearse,
There's nothing that happens
Which couldn't be worse.
We have all sought to comfort ourselves at some point in life by
recognizing this reality-
it could be worse. It is almost always true, but still it is a
negative comfort. Your life can be a
mess, but others are even worse. If
this is the best you got, then it has to be what you
hang on to, but there is a
better and more positive way to deal with the negatives of life,
and that is to wait and see
if what you thought was bad turns out to be good, and instead of being the
worst, it may in reality be the best thing that could have happened.
That is what Paul is writing about to the Philippians. They are worried about Paul. They heard he was thrown in prison in Rome,
and they have naturally concluded that his being arrested was not a good
thing. They assumed that his ministry,
which they supported, was now on hold, and Paul would be of no value in
advancing the Gospel now. Paul says not
to worry, for your gifts are not money down a
hole. His being arrested turns
out to actually help the advance of the Gospel, and give him a better ministry
than the one he had planned.
The key to being an optimist is having the patience to wait
and see what God will do with your negative experience. We so often jump to the conclusion that bad
stuff is just that, and that alone.
Sickness, trials, shipwrecks, stoning, and prison do not sound like
prizes for which you would sell many lottery tickets. Nobody wants this sort of stuff in their life if they can avoid
it. What Paul learned by his experience
is that the bad stuff of life can be a way for God to use your life in a way
that good things could not be used.
Paul's being a prisoner led to his having a ministry to the palace guard
of Nero, and some of these soldiers came to Christ, which never would have
happened had he not become a prisoner. He never would have crossed their path
had he not been arrested.
The fruit of Paul's ministry in prison was quite extensive,
and he writes in 4:22,
"All the saints send
you greetings, especially those who belong to Caesar's household." Paul had Christian friends in the highest
places, even the house of the Emperor.
There is no reason to believe this ever could have happened if Paul had
not been treated like a criminal. This
is one of the answers to the question-why do bad things happen to good
people? It is because bad things are
often the only way to get us in touch with the right people, and to make us
willing to go the way God wants us to go.
In other words, bad things
are tools God uses to get the job done in our lives. The point is not to rejoice in bad things, but to rejoice in the
Lord who can use bad things for good goals we never would have achieved without
the bad things.
Colonel Bringle of the Salvation Army became a very popular
author. He came out of Harvard with
honors, and began his ministry on a street corner in Boston. A drunken hooligan threw a brick at him and
hit him in the head. He received a
concussion that put him in the hospital for months. During his convalescence he wrote a book called Help To
Holiness. He added four volumes, and
these devotional aids sold in large numbers around the world. He said, "My brethren, if there had
never been a brick, there never would have been a book." His bad experience opened up doors he never
would have entered had they not compelled him to do so. Don't be so quick to label bad things as a
curse. Wait to see if it might be a
blessing. Even pray to that end.
Grace Crowell wrote a poem
that says it all.
Yet as I live them, strange
I did not know
Which hours were destined thus
to live and shine,
And which among the
countless ones would grow
To be, peculiarly, forever
mine.
If I but wait, perhaps, this
hour will be
Like silver in the sun, some
day, to me!
Paul never dreamed that his days in prison would be days God
would use him to let his light shine through all of history because of the
epistles he would write there. We should pray, "Lord this is a bad day I
am having, what good can you help me make of it for your glory?"
F. W. Borham, the great Australian preacher and author, tells
of his pastor friend who was asked in Seminary to preach at a certain church
one weekend when the pastor became ill. He had other plans with 2 of his best
friends, and he did not want to go. He suggested other names and begged to be excused,
but the Professor refused to let him off the hook. It was with deep anger that
he submitted, and he went to the church in a negative mood, wanting to curse
them rather than bless them. But all of his negative feelings were sheer waste,
for he met the love of his life there, and his whole future was changed. Had he
just waited to see what the end result would be, he could have saved himself a
lot of grief. On of the most common phrases of the Bible is wait on the Lord,
and the reason is, we need to learn to wait and see what God in his providence
is going to do before we label bad things as a curse.
Bad things often turn out like Paul's being thrown in prison.
They are stepping stones to fruitful blessings that could not be foreseen. God
loves to work in all things, even bad things, for good. It is God's specialty,
and wise is the Christian who has a wait and see attitude toward bad things.
Because Paul had this attitude, he did not have to back off earlier testimony.
Had he jumped the gun and written saying this is the worst thing to ever happen
to me, and now my ministry is ruined, he would have been embarrassed to have to
later say it was a great blessing. He waited to see what God would bring to
pass. Jowett wrote, "The cloud, which appeared so ominous, brought a
gracious shower; the restriction became the mother of a larger liberty."
Prison bars and progress sound incompatible, but Paul just waited and sure
enough, he saw his arrest lead to advance. It was a promotion to a higher
ministry.
Why is it so important for Christians to grasp this reality
that God can use evil for good? Because most of the unbelief in this world is
base on this very issue. Most atheists are so because they say a good God
cannot exist and permit all the terrible evil and suffering there is in this
world. Many people do not believe in God because they feel they are better than
God, for they would not permit the evil that exists if they had the power of
God. So who needs a God who is less noble and compassionate than they are
themselves? This would be a fairly powerful argument if the Bible did not
reveal that God permits evil for a higher good. He permitted evil men to kill
His Son for the sake of redeeming lost men. He permits men to become lost, because
only those who are lost and then found again can be truly righteous and loyal
to God forever. Satan was made perfect
by God, but he fell because of pride. That will never happen to those redeemed
by the Son of God. They will be eternally loyal, for they know they are what
they are by the grace of God, and not by their own wisdom, power, or goodness.
If God is going to have an eternal kingdom with assurance their will never be
another rebellion, he had to permit a world with evil and free choice. This terrible
fallen world is essential to the perfect world to come. God will bring good out
of all its evil.
What good is evil? It is the opportunity to be a child of God.
Paul says do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. Use evil to
reveal your good. Let your light shine by showing the contrast of the good to
the evil.
Where their is hate show
love.
Where their is greed show
generosity.
Where their is bitterness
show forgiveness.
Where their is gloom show
joy.
Where their is anxiety show
peace.
Where their is violence show
gentleness.
The point is, if there was no evil their would be no way to
identify the good. The goal of history
for the Christian is to bring good out of evil, so that evil does not win the war.
Whenever you stop with evil, you let it win. The Christian is to overcome evil
with good, and that means to go over, around, or through it, and if you can't
avoid it no matter what, then seek to use it for some good and outwit it. The
providence of God is God working in history to make bad events and
circumstances lead to good consequences. Paul's imprisonment was bad for it was
unjust and unfair, and caused by hate. God used their evil scheme to get the
Gospel into the very household of Caesar. This was the beginning of
Christianity becoming the official faith of the Roman Empire.
We often forget the idea of no pain, no gain philosophy, and
we resist making anything bad for our children to endure, even when we should
know that helps them to become stronger. Cheryl Forbes, a Christian journalist
who worked for Zondervan Publishing House, wrote a book called Backdoor
Blessings. Her first job was terrible. The boss was an older women who made her
rewrite almost everything she submitted for publication. For a year she
resented this snooty miss know-it-all. But slowly it dawned on her that she had
become a good writer, and she owed it all to this boss she did not like. Had
the boss been a good buddy, and let her get by with less than her best, she
never would have attained the level of expertise she had reached. The one she
thought was her enemy was really her secret friend.
In Acts 9:16 God said of Paul, "I will show him how much
he must suffer for my name." Paul
was chosen for a tough life, but out of all the evil he had to suffer, the
world is still, an will forever, reaping the good fruit of his life. His thorn in the flesh was a pain he had to
endure lest his pride caused him to lose his favored status with God.
It is a principle of life
that if someone you love will be a better person by what they suffer, then love
will permit that suffering for the sake of that goal. If your child will be
more loving as a person by being discipline, then in love you must inflect pain
for the sake of this higher goal. If
its a good enough principle for God, it is a good enough principle for us to
practice in all loving relationships.
I had to hurt Lavonne over and over again this past week. I rubbed her damaged muscle to fight the inflammation. It was painful, but I did it willingly, for
I knew it was the only way to get her back to health. Pain was the necessary path to pleasure. I hurt her on purpose for the sake of a
positive goal. That was why Paul was in
prison, and that is why a lot of negative things happen in life to all of
us. The path of pain can lead to
pleasure for those who wait to see where the path will lead.
Dr. Reuben Youngdahl, of Mt. Olivet Lutheran Church in
Minneapolis, tells of his experience on a world tour. He was enjoying the white sands of the Indian Ocean at Durham,
South Africa. He gave no thought to
sunburn until it was too late, and he looked like a lobster. He was so sick in the night he considered
going to the hospital.
He had to spend the rest of
his time there sitting in the shade watching others have fun.
The day of his great
suffering was the day the blue-battle fish infested the shore waters, and with their stingers sent over 1000
swimmers to the hospital. 150 were
poisoned serious enough to be hospitalized.
Several almost died. He could
have been one, and so he realized that
his misfortune was also his good fortune.
His pain saved him from worse pain, or even death.
President Theodore Roosevelt lived before bifocals were invented. The result was he had to carry two pairs of
glasses with him. One was for near
vision, and the other for far vision.
In his last campaign he was shot when he was in Milwaukee. The surgeon who examined his wound handed
him his steel spectacle case and said that the bullet hit this case, and it was
deflected from your heart, and saved your life. The president took the case with its shattered spectacle and
said, I've always considered the burden and handicap of having to carry these
two pairs of glasses, especially these heavy ones that were in this case, as a
very sore one, and here at last they have been the means of saving my
life." It was a long wait to see
any good from that negative reality, but in the long run it turned out that his
burden was a blessing.
Arturo Toscanini, the famous orchestra conductor, hated being
handicapped with his near
sightedness. At nineteen he was playing
the cello in an orchestra, but he could not see the music on the stand, so he
had to work harder than anyone, and memorize the music. One day the orchestra leader became ill, and
suddenly Toscanini was the only member of the orchestra who knew the
score. So he conducted it without the
score, and got great responses from the audience. Had he not been near sighted he never would have been ready for
this opportunity that lead him to become one of the great conductors of all
time. The bad thing in his life became
the best thing in his life for his career.
Charles Spurgeon tells the true story of how lies can be used
to the glory of God. An evangelist was
to preach in a small Italian town back when there was a great deal of hostility
between Catholics and Protestants. The
local priest told his people that this man who was coming was a worshippers of
the devil. This scared many, and so
they stayed away, but one depraved soul was interested in devil worship, so he
went to hear the man. Nothing could
have gotten him there but this lie. But
when he came and heard of Jesus, the devil's conqueror, he became a convert to
Jesus rather than the devil he was going to seek. God used a lie to bring this man to Jesus.
The point is not, that liars are good, or handicaps, or other
bad things are of value. The whole
negative aspect of a fallen world is just that-negative. It is bad, and not good, for it would all be
taken into the eternal kingdom if it was good.
But the fact is, it is all eliminated.
We are calling black white, or evil good, for all bad things are bad.
The point is, God is not
limited to using good things for His purpose.
He can use bad things as well, and it is to be one of the challenges of
life to work with God to bring good out of evil.
What happened at Standard Oil is a good illustration in the
world of industry. After oil is
refined, a greasy black liquid is a waste product. They use to empty it at the river, but laws were passed to stop
that. Then they dug a pit to get rid of
it, but that failed. They tried to burn
it, but that was almost a disaster.
Finally, in desperation,
they called in chemists from
all over the country, and by accident they stumbled on to a way to make this
massive nuisance into paraffin. This
became one of the most profitable products of the refineries. This story is repeated in the history of
dozens of waste products.
The point being, what is true for things is true also for
events. Negatives, like the wastes of life and the bad events, can, by the
grace of God be transformed into valuable products and good experiences. So don't
waste anything in life, for what you feel is bad and worthless can become your
most treasured event. Charles Kettering was cranking his car in the good old
days, and it kicked on him and broke his arm. He thought, this is terrible.
There must be an easier way to start a car. This painful event motivated him to
go and invent the self-starter that has saved millions of others from
suffering. One man's pain led to the greater pleasure of the masses.
That good can come out of evil does not mean there is nothing
difficult to bear in the evil. Paul lost his freedom and had to be confined in
chains and pay a heavy price for the good that came of it. It was not free but
costly to be used of God this way. It would be just as hard, or even harder, however,
if no good ever came of it. The hard part is made easier in knowing good will
be the end result. Paul did eventually get executed, but he had all the joy of
seeing the good that was coming because of his suffering. This is not always
the case. The nuclear crisis at the reactor in Chernobyl is a good example.
Many people died in that crisis, but it forced doctors to learn rapidly about
the removal, treatment and transplant of bone marrow. They had to act quickly,
and they learned by trial and error, but the end result was they learned what
will benefit all mankind. One of the doctors made this comment.
"We were like Star
Trek. We were going
where mankind had never gone
before,
but we were being dragged
there reluctantly.
Now, as a result, we have a
whole new way to
deal with an even cure
cancer." The same
chaotic energy that killed
so many at
Chernobyl may now result in a procedure
of donor and autologous bone
marrow
transplants that will save
thousands of lives.
This new order was born of
loss and chaos.
So often in history terrible things for the few can be
tremendous benefits for the many. We are among the millions who are benefiting
from Paul's imprisonment. Because of
it, we have all the wisdom of this letter he wrote in prison. Paul suffered for your pleasure and
mine. God used the bad things Paul had
to endure to give good things to us. It
is one of the ways of God in history to show that He is in control even though
man, by his sin and folly, is perpetually doing evil and harmfully things. God is in the business of reversing the
effects of man's folly.
What we need to learn from all of this is not to jump to conclusions, and write off
bad experiences as total loss. Ask God
to help you use the bad as a stepping stone
to some good. If God loves to bring
good out of evil, then don't waste evil, and let it be evil only,
but seek for ways it can
lead to good. A most dramatic and
radical illustration of this comes from the diary of Ann Traylor, a servant
girl coming to America from England.
She was raped on board the ship.
It was so devastating she wanted to die, but fortunately for her a
Quaker lady named Henrietta Best was there, and she had been raped decades
before by French soldiers. Now let's
make this clear-this was a totally evil experience-it was pure evil. But the point is, it was not wasted, but
used. Henrietta came to Ann and used
her evil experience to bring comfort to her.
Ann wrote in her diary-
She could say to me,
"Hush, it happened to me,
too." And those words saved my life and my
reason. What resurrected me, were her love
and her understanding,
which, clearly, were
the fruit of her own
suffering; she could identify
with me without pious
pretense. When she
consoled me and took me in
her arms, I ex-
perienced the presence of
God.
The evil of the past was still evil, and those who did it will
be judged, but good was brought out of the evil by a wise use of it. Had Paul laid around his cell swearing at
the guards, his evil experience would not have been used for good. He had to be an impressive witness to his
joy in Christ in spite of his suffering, or he would have seen no fruit from
his evil experience. Bad things don't
lead to good by their nature. They only
root like fruit and get worse. They can
only lead to good as we learn to use them wisely.
The point here is not to say let's all get arrested and see
what good can come of it. We are to
avoid all evil, and try to prevent every bad thing in life. But when we cannot, and we have to suffer in
this fallen world, let's not waste it, and jump to the conclusion that it is of
no value. Let's work with God, and seek
to overcome evil with good, and rob the devil of his pleasure. Robert Schuller in his popular book, Life's
Not Fair But God Is Good, deals with this issue, and gives many marvelous
illustrations. One is of Serena Young,
a Los Angeles Orthopedic Surgeon. As a
two year girl in Taiwan, this Chinese toddler contracted polio, and lost the
use of her legs. She was in and out of
the hospital until she was 21, but never regained the use of her legs.
She was a bitter young woman. She was angry at God for allowing this to happen to her. She started to search in high school for some
way to make sense of this, which seems so senseless, and this is what she
discovered; Rom. 8:28, "And we know that in all things God works for the
good of those who love Him, who have called according to His purpose."
She wanted her handicap to
be used for good, and so she began to pray that God would use her tragedy for
something good. She stopped her
grieving and accepted her disability.
She decided she wanted to be an orthopedic surgeon. She was told that it was crazy, but she felt
it was God's calling, and though the training was so hard she wanted to quit at
times,
she persevered, and now has
a very fulfilling career helping people deal with their handicaps. The Los Angeles Times had a picture of her
propped up on crutches leaning over an operating table giving help and hope to
others, who like her, had been dealt a bad hand. She was not wasting her bad experience, but was using it for
good, and for the glory of God, whom she praises for helping her see bad things
can be used for His purposes. May God
help us all learn this lesson, and strive by God's grace to bring good out of
evil.
10.FRUITFUL FRUSTRATION Based on I Thess. 2:13F
Joe Bayly had a chance to
stay in the luxurious Hilton Hotel in Chicago.
It was going to be a treat of a retreat, but then he was hit again by
the x-factor. That is what he calls
Murphy's Law-the law that says, if anything can go wrong it will. The hot water in his room would not
work. He was frustrated, but not all
that surprised, for the x-factor is everywhere. It is like the law of gravity.
It starts in childhood with getting the mumps on Thanksgiving. Then when you wear your new shoes, you get a
deep scratch in them the first time, which you can't even remember happening to
your old worn out pair. Then you move
up to breaking an arm just as summer vacation begins. Later on, the night before your first date you get a big pimple
on your face. Some people do grow out
of the pimples, but nobody ever grows out of the x-factor. Bayly says, when he finally gets a chance to
sleep in late, that is when some unusual event will wake him up and hour before
his usual time.
Dr. R. F. Gumperson began serious research on the x-factor
back in 1938. He made some discoveries
that led the x-factor to be called Gumperson's law by many. Some of his discoveries were-
1. That a child exposed to a disease for weeks without catching it
will then without exposure come down with it the day before the family
vacation.
2. That the dishwasher is most likely to break down on an evening in
which you are expecting guests.
3. That good parking places are most often seen on the other side of
the street.
4. That a man who can't start a fire with a box of matches and the
Sunday paper will start a forest fire when he throws a burnt match out of his
car window.
There is no telling what other discoveries his genius may have
yielded had he not been killed in 1947.
He was walking along the highway one evening facing the traffic as wise
walkers do, when he was struck by a visiting Englishman who was driving on the
shoulder.
The x-factor got him. It gets us all at sometime or another, and
the reason I am preaching on it is because it has recently gotten us. As we were going through a very frustrating
time, it suddenly dawned on me that this is a major cause of suffering in the
world, and it would fit right into my series on suffering. I knew the Bible would have something to say
about an experience so universal, and so when I began to search, it was not
long before I discovered that it is a major factor in Biblical revelation.
Let me share some of our experience to show what motivated me
to study the subject of frustration.
Lavonne and I always look forward to May because that is our anniversary
month, and for many years it has been our month for a special get away. This year it was even more important to us
because Lavonne had been ill so much with a strange virus that would come and
go. It came more than it went, and left
her weak and bedridden. I have had to
do things I have seldom or never done in cleaning, cooking, and taking care of
her.
She was getting better, and
the Sunday before our vacation she was in both services and felt good. But then the x-factor got us. Monday she was ill again, and the first two
days of our vacation we were going to specialists. On the third day she was admitted to Bethesda
Hospital, and that is where
we spent Wednesday to Saturday.
It was the most frustrating vacation we have ever
experienced. This deep taste of
frustration made me realize just how powerful a force frustration can be in
people's lives.
I know everybody gets
frustrated, but when it is a prolonged experience, it has all kinds of
potential for being destructive. I
better understand the battle of those who endure long range frustration. And I better understand why it is one of
Satan's most powerful tools to damage the Christian life. I realized how important it is for
Christians not to be ignorant of Satan's devices, and I became determined to
find out what God's Word had to say about this serious subject. We can't begin to cover it in one message,
but what we can cover is enough to help us be aware of some basics. The first thing we want to look at is-
I. THE FACT OF FRUSTRATION.
By this I mean, it is a part of our fallen world, and it goes
with the territory. There is no
escape. To be human is to experience
frustration. It is not sinful to be frustrated,
for Jesus was sinless, but He did not escape frustration. He may have had more than His share even,
for the more ideals and goals you have, the more you will be frustrated. That is why Paul had so many
frustrations. In our text, Paul says he
wanted to come to see the Thessalonians, and he tried time and time again, but
Satan stopped him. The word for stopped
in the Greek is the word for frustration.
Satan is the great frustrator of the Christians goals. The word means to hinder, to impede, to
thwart, and thus, to prevent the achieving of a goal by being an obstacle. The military used the word to refer to the
practice of making deep ruts in the
roads to hold up a pursuing enemy army.
You can imagine the frustration of a chariot driver in a hurry with deep
ruts in the road.
Satan is a master at blocking the way to God's best. He prevents blessings just as we are to
prevent suffering. All through history
this has been his strategy-to frustrate the believer in trying to reach his
objective, and cause him to give up in despair. When Ezra records the attempt of God's people to rebuild the
temple of God, he tells us of the strategy of Satan in chapter 4:4-5,
"Then the people's around them set out to discourage
the people of Judah and make
them afraid to go on building. They
hired counselors to work against them and frustrate their plans during the
entire reign of Cyrus king of Persia."
It is one of the facts of life we have to face, even if we hate it, and
would rather not be aware of it. If we
try to do something that we know is the will of God, we will have to expect
frustration.
Be not weary in well doing says Paul, and why? Because he knows from experience that
well-doing is not a piece of cake. It
is hard work, and often will not lead to the results you hope for. That is why Jesus had to experience so much
frustration. He was perpetually going
about doing good, but was it all greeted with gratitude? Not so!
The Pharisees treated Him like a criminal for loving people so much that
He would ignore their laws to heal people.
It frustrated Jesus that those who were supposed to represent God cared
more about rules than about people. Jesus
was frustrated with His own disciples because they were so much like the world,
and they quarreled among themselves for status. He was frustrated over Jerusalem, for He loved the people and
wanted to protect them from the wrath to come, but they would not listen and
open their hearts to Him. Jesus wept
over the city in frustration.
We could do a whole study just on the frustration of Jesus,
but the point we need to stress is that frustration is just a fact of
life. It is not wrong to be frustrated. It is just a reality that needs to be
recognized. It makes a world of difference
to know this, and that Jesus and Paul, and all God's people, are in this
together. Frustration, or the being
hindered from reaching goals, is a normal experience for all who are in the
will of God.
It is not a sign that you
are failing God, or that you are on the wrong path. If Satan can get you to feel this way, his strategy will be
effective, and frustration can lead to failure. When Christians lose their cool because of frustration, they do
all kinds of meaningless or destructive things.
The poet Homer, in his epic The Odyssey, tells of how the
Greek General Olysses was leading his army toward Troy, and came unexpectedly
upon a flooded river he could not cross.
He was so frustrated by this obstacle that he went out into the river up
to his knees and began to thrash the water with chains. As might be expected, the river gave no
response to his rage. The nervous
energy created by frustration needs to be channeled toward constructive ends,
and we will look at this in a moment, but we first need to get it in our heads
that frustration is a fact of life, and something we all need to cope with,
even in the will of God.
Edwin Erickson, our Conference missionary in Ethiopia, wrote
of the many frustrations
he and his wife faced as they
returned to Ethiopia. He writes,
"A home that sometimes
seems like a dorm.
City water that occasionally
disappears when it is most needed.
A basement that sometimes
floods after a heavy rain.
A guest house for our
Ethiopian brothers and sisters that has plumbing problems.
People needing medical
attention.
We need patience to find our
niche, try to be ourselves and at the same time be God's servants. Pray for us that we will not be overwhelmed
or frustrated by human expectations
as we discover what God
expects from us."
Frustration is a common battle on the foreign field, but it is
the same on the home field. Listen to Gary Odle, who is a home missionary
trying to get a new church started. His
testimony represents thousands of Christians in their struggle to be used of
God. He writes, "We tried
everything. We did door-to-door survey
work and evangelism. No results. We organized a neighbor barbecue at the
community swimming pool, personally inviting over 500 people and handing out
flyers. No results. We promoted neighborhood information
meetings for those looking for a church home.
Many said they were sincerely interested-but no results." He goes on with more efforts that got no
response, and he concludes, "By December I was frustrated: All this work and expense with little to
show for it. Doubt assailed me. Maybe I am the wrong man for the job. Maybe I am going about this in the wrong
way. Maybe I'm not spiritual
enough. Maybe I should quit."
Doubts and depression are the common results of frustration,
and if they are allowed to become the dominant emotions in one's life, they
lead to becoming weary in well doing. Thousands of Christian soldiers go AWOL,
and do just that-they quit. But Paul did
not quit. He faced the fact of
frustration frequently, but he refused to fail because of it. He was thrown in prison, and run out of
town. He was unjustly punished, and had
to endure all kinds of frustrating delays, and being let down by fellow Christians
who, like Demus, forsook him. Then, on
top of the Satanic obstacles in his path, and the human hindrances to his
goals, there was also the God caused frustrations. God's ways are not our ways, and the result is, Paul had goals
and ambitions that God prevented, and thus, frustrated.
In Acts 16:6-7 we see God guides sometimes by closing doors we
want to go through. He forces us to go through doors He wants us to go
through. In other words, frustration
can even be a part of God's providential leading. Dr. Luke writes, "Paul and his companions traveled
throughout the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been kept by the Holy
Spirit from preaching the Word in the province of Asia. When they came to the border of Mysia, they
tried to enter Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus would not allow them
to." Paul went West instead of
East, and Christianity became predominately a Western rather than an Eastern
movement, because Christ hindered Paul's plan, and promoted his own.
So frustration can be both demonic and divine, and to round it
off, we need to see it can also be self-caused. Paul was frustrated with the Galatian Christians for listening to
the Judaisers, who would drag them back under the law. But he blamed external forces on their being
obstructive, and he writes in Gal. 5:7, "You were running a good
race. Who cut in on you and kept you
from obeying the truth?" Cut in on
is the same Greek word for frustrated.
This word is also used by Peter to refer to self-hindrance. In I Pet. 3:7 he writes, "Husbands, in
the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with
respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of
life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers." Unanswered prayer is one of the great frustrations of the
Christian life, but you can't blame the devil for it all, for Peter says we
frustrate our own goals when we refuse to relate to our mate in the way God
desires.
Paul recognized the danger of self-frustration also, and that
is why he put up with a lot of things that were not the best, because he did
not want to frustrate the plan of God.
He writes in I Cor. 9:12, "If others have this right of support
from you, shouldn't we have it all the more?
But we did not use this right.
On the contrary, we put up with anything rather than hinder the Gospel
of Christ." Paul is saying, he
would rather endure frustration of his rights than cause the frustration of the
Gospel. We have not begun to cover all
the reality of frustration, but we have established that it is a fact of life
that is inevitable, and has its source in-
1. The Satanic.
2. The Spirit.
3. The self.
There's no escape from the
fact of frustration. All we can do is
respond wisely or unwisely to this fact, and that leads us to consider our
second point which is-
II. THE FRUIT OF FRUSTRATION.
Even bad responses to frustration can lead to getting your own
way, but these do not produce the fruit of the Spirit, which is always to be the Christian goal. A child is the prime example of how to cope
with frustration in an immature manner.
We should expect this of a child, but their bad example is not to be our
guide. A child responds to frustration
with anger, and then a tantrum, if the
frustration is not quickly relieved. It
is wonderful that children are the weakest segment of society. If they controlled power, history would be a
short story. Block a child from getting
his own way, and you often create a monster.
Fortunately, their fangs and other weapons are not yet fully formed.
Fruitful frustration calls for acceptance and adjustment. It does not make any difference if the
blocked goal is a result of Satan, the Holy Spirit, or the self, for the only
way you can be creative in your use of frustration is to accept the reality of
it, and adjust your goal. That is what
Paul did. He did not stand before
closed doors and pound until he was bloody.
He walked away and entered other doors.
He did not say, if I can't have it my way, I quit. He accepted the fact that his way was not
possible, and he would have to go a different direction. He knew how to retreat as well as
advance. A strategic retreat has saved
many an army, and wise is the general who knows when retreat is the key to
victory. A stubborn inflexible determination to have your own way regardless of
the consequences is not a Christian virtue.
It is like childish rebellion against reality. Paul did not like it that he could not get to the Thessalonians
or to Romans, for he was hindered, but he did not devote his life to grieving
or to rebellion. Instead, he went
elsewhere and did the will of God.
I am sure Paul did not like the experience of being thrown in
prison, but he did not, in frustration, bang his head on the bars, or go into a
vegetative mood of depression. He got
out his pen and wrote letters that changed the course of history. He accepted his limitations, and adjusted to
the situation, and did something else other than his plan A, and God used plan
B to accomplish even more than Paul ever dreamed of doing with plan A.
Even God's frustrating no
can be a blessing if we accept it and adjust to doing something other than what
we planned to do.
Nobody gets their own way all the time. Look at king David, for he had a deep desire
to build a temple for God. It was one
of the great dreams of his life. But
God said no. God put the block before
him, and hindered him from achieving this great goal. God said to David that Solomon his son would do it, and it would
be known as the temple of Solomon, and not the temple of David. What a frustrating development, but David
did not say, if I can't make the rules of the game, I won't play. He accepted the fact that he could not do
all he wanted to, and he adjusted to this reality and said, I can at least
collect all the materials needed for the project, and that is what he did. Someone said, "If you can't do all the
that you want, you can want to do all that you can." That is what frustrated people do who do
what is wise to do in frustration.
Paul was so frustrated when the Jews would not respond to the
Gospel. He loved them and longed for
them to be saved, but when they rejected the Gospel, he did not give up
and quit, but went to the Gentiles and
became the apostle to the Gentiles.
Abraham Lincoln wanted people to love and support him for his fight
against slavery. Instead, he got letters
threatening his life. They came on a
consistent basis, and they were a frustration to him,
but he finally adjusted, and
recognized he could not stop other people's folly. He could only choose to go on with his goals, and that is what he
did. He wrote, "I long ago made up
my mine that if anybody wants to kill me, he will do it. If I wore a shirt of mail and kept myself
surrounded by a bodyguard, it would be all the same. There are a thousand ways to getting a man if it is desired that
he should be killed." He did not
stop the assassin who finally got him, but he also never let the frustration of
that threat keep him from doing the best he could to stop slavery.
Doctors face frequent frustration because of the complexity of
medicine and the body. What cures one kills another, and every cure is also a
potential cause of other problems.Dr. S. I. McMillen, college physician of
Houghton College, a well known Christian institution, tells of the 35 year old
Mrs. Cheryl Wilkins who had the dread disease of Lupus. She was put on high dosages of
Prednisone. It probably saved her life,
but her eyes bulged, her blood pressure was high, and she had headaches and
emotion problems. She became a walking
medical museum. This is frustrating to
doctors when causing suffering is the only way they know how to help
people. They have terribly frustrating
limitations, and they get plenty of flak because of it, but thank God they
don't give up. They have to face up to
the reality of their limitations, and press on doing what they can.
Paul could not choose where he would be all the time, so he
chose to start a church wherever he happen to be. He could not choose to be well off all the time, for sometimes he
was forced to be poor and do without.
Since he could not choose, he came to the ultimate adjustment and writes
in Phil. 4:11-13, "....I have learned to be content whatever the
circumstances. I know what it is to be
in need, and I know what it is to have plenty.
I have learned the secret of
being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether
living in plenty or in want. I can do
everything through Him who gives me strength."
I never saw it before, but this famous saying of Paul, "I
can do all things through Christ who strengthens me," is directly related
to frustration. He is not saying he has
some kind of plug into omnipotence and can do whatever he pleases. He is saying, when I can't do what I please,
and when I can't be where I want, and when I can't have what I wish, and life
refuses to go my way, I can, by the power of Christ, be content. I can adjust to the fact of frustration, and
I can make it fruitful by accepting it, and choosing to refuse to let it get me
down and discouraged.
Satan could not defeat Paul, because Paul learned the secret
of victory over frustration. If you way is blocked, go a different way. If you can't, then stop where you are, and
do something different. Adjust to
changing circumstances, and be content in the state you are in, regardless of
what goals are being frustrated, for that is the key to being fruitful. The popular idea that says, if life gives
you a lemon, make lemonade, is not off the mark, for it fits the mind of
Paul. Keep in mind, we do not always know
if our goals are being frustrated by God, Satan, others, or even ourselves, but
the response on our part has to be the same if we are to make them fruitful.
When my granddaughter was brought to the hospital to visit
Lavonne, she had some very specific
goals in mind. Two of them especially
stand out. The goal of ripping the
Guidepost Magazine out of the lounge, and the goal of pulling the plug for the
TV out of the socket. My goal was to
frustrate her two major objectives. The
score was a tie, for I only partially prevented it, and she only partially
achieved it. The point is, I was being
frustrating to her for her own safety, and for the benefit of others. Everyone would have been the loser had she
been free to do as she pleased.
Frustration is not all bad, and so we have to accept it with
that in mind. It could be, the
obstacles in our way preventing us from fulfilling our will are really
beneficial. But even if they are not,
and are of the devil, or have their source in human folly, there is only one
intelligent response to frustration. It
is the response of Paul at his conversion, and for the rest of his life. Jesus stopped him cold in his plan to arrest
Christians, and Paul knocked from his horse, blind and frustrated, said to
Jesus, "Lord, what wouldst thou have me to do?" His response of obedience made this one of
the most fruitful frustrations of history, and he had many more to come.
One of the most famous works of art in the world is the
ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome.
When the pope asked Michaelangelo to paint it, he protested. He was a sculpture not a painter, but the
pope would not take no for an answer.
He started this colossal task in frustration. He had to paint ten thousand square feet of ceiling with pictures
that would form a unified design. It
took 343 figures, some of them 18 feet high.
To make it more impossible, the five artists hired to help him were all
sent home, and their work destroyed. He would have to do it as a one man
project.
He felt it is was too difficult and beyond him. He did not feel like a genius, but was
tormented by frustration at the difficulty of the task he was forced to do
against his will.
The first scaffolding had to
be torn down and rebuilt. The first
section he painted developed a mold and he begged the pope to let him quit, but
he refused. So, month after month he
lay on back 68 feet up in the air doing a job he did not want to do. After about four and a half years of this
agonizing labor the work was uncovered in Oct. of 1512, and for over 450 years
it stands as one of the wonders of the world of art. The point is, Michaelangelo was frustrated with this task from
start to finish, but he did not, because of his frustration, blow it, and do a
poor job. He did his best in spite of
frustration, and made it one of the most fruitful periods of his life. He couldn't do what he wanted, but he wanted
to do what he could, and he did.
Frustration is not eliminated by a wise response to it, but it
can be elevated so that the negative energy is used for positive purposes. The most frustrating thing in life has to be
living without assurance of one's destination.
It is frustrating not to know for sure if you are going into eternity as
God's friend or foe. This frustration
can be the most fruitful of all, if it moves you to take God's gift, and to
receive Jesus as your Savior and Lord, and, thereby, have assurance of
salvation. This would make it life's
greatest fruitful frustration.
CHAPTER 11.THE PARADOX OF
MONEY Based on I Tim. 6:3-10
Someone said, life is an everlasting struggle to keep money
coming in, and teeth, hair, and vital organs from coming out. Few have known this better than General
Ulysses S. Grant. He led the armies of
the North to victory in the Civil War, and was twice elected president of the
United States. He was a fairly wealthy
man when he retired from public office, but he proved that the wealthy have
problems with money too. They make
mistakes on a grander scale. Grant
invested his capital in a new Wall Street investment firm operated by a smooth
talking young man, whom Grant considered a financial wizard. If the ability to make money disappear was
what he meant, then he was a wizard, indeed, for Grant lost everything, and at
62 he was penniless.
Among his many friends
was Samuel Clemens who had published many successful books under the name of
Mark Twain. Clemens convinced Grant he
should write about the Civil War, and he would publish his book. Grant signed the contract and got to work
producing two volumes that rank among the world's great military
narratives. Grant got 10 thousand in
advance, and his widow got 200 thousand in royalties. His heirs also got close to half a million. Clemens made a fortune on the deal, and he
decided to try it with two other famous generals. It didn't work, and Clemens had some reverses that led him to go
bankrupt at age 59. He too made a come
back, and when he died in 1910 he left his heirs
over half a million.
These two famous men illustrate the universal battle of life-how
to make money; how to keep it, and how to make it count. The Christian does not escape this battle at
all. The Christian spends a large
portion of life engaged in making, spending, giving, saving, and losing
money. What makes this hard is the Christian
is not endowed with any special gift that enables him to be any wiser than the
non-Christian in his management of money.
That is why the New Testament is so full of warnings about money, and
the danger of being obsessed by it.
There is also, as in our text, a lot of New Testament advice on how to
use money wisely.
All of this would be unnecessary if Christians were just
naturally financial wizards, but this is not the case. Martin Luther was one of the great
theological minds of history, but he had no skill whatever with money
management. At age 42 he had not yet
saved a penny. When he married
Katherine Von Bora she discovered he was a money management drop out, who let
money slip through his fingers with no accounting for where it went. She had to tell their banker not to honor a
draft unless she first approved it. She
had to take over to protect him from himself.
This story has been repeated over and over again in the lives of
Christian leaders.
C. S. Lewis was one of the most brilliant Christians of the
20th century, but he had no sense of money management. When Joy Davidman married him, she found
that he had thousands of pounds he didn't even know he had. He also had a small fortune in his checking
account, and this was back in the day when there was no interest on it. She quickly got it into a savings
account.
One of the reasons many genius type people are not good money
managers is because money is not that important to them. They are preoccupied with other and greater
things. Einstein, for example, sometimes used his check as a book mark, and
then turned it into the library. Robert
Frost wrote,
Never ask of money spent
Where the spender thinks it
went.
Nobody was ever meant
To remember or invent
What they did with every
cent.
It is admirable to be preoccupied with values greater than
money, and not to be obsessed with it.
Prov. 3:13-14 says, "Blessed is the man who finds wisdom, the man who
gains understanding. For she is more
profitable than silver and yields better returns than gold." Luther and Lewis were wise in devoting their
minds to greater values than money management.
But the higher wisdom yet is to know how to use money wisely without it
being the dominant occupation of your mind.
The Proverbs also speak highly of the values of money. Prov. 10:15-16 says, "The wealth of the
rich is their fortified city, but poverty is the ruin of the poor. The wages of the righteous brings them life,
but the income of the wicked brings them punishment." The balance life calls for both the
avoidance of addiction to money, and the application of the advantages of
money. In other words, money is a
paradox. It is both dangerous and
delightful; a curse and a blessing.
Paul says the love of money is the root of all evil, and Mark
Twain said, the lack of money is the root of all evil. The one does not eliminate the other, for
Twain's remark compliments Paul's. It
is lack of money that leads people to such an obsessive love of it that they do
all kinds of evil to get it. The point
is, it is hard to say anything about money,
either negative or positive,
that cannot be demonstrated to be a valid statement. The poem, The Song Of Silver says,
Doug from the mountain-side,
washed in the glen
Servant am I or the master
of men.
Steal me, I curse you,
Earn me, I bless you;
Grasp me and hand me, a
friend I shall possess you.
Lie for me, die for me,
covet me, take me,
Angel or devil, I am what
you make me.
This is just what Paul is saying in our text. Paul recognizes fully the paradox of
money,and so he covers both sides by sharing warnings as to its dangers, and
wisdom as to its delights. If we are
going to open our homes to Christ, we will
have to be aware that He is aware of
how we see and use money. This
is a vital part of our life for Him, for money is a major means by which we
become a part of His upper class, which is the servant class. It is important that we have a good grasp of
both the dangers and delights of money.
First lets look at-
I. THE DANGERS OF MONEY.
The primary danger is in its power to deceive us into
believing it is a substitute for God. Paul says the eagerness to be rich has
led some to wander from the faith. Moneytheism-the
almighty dollar replaces monotheism.
Christians can be deceived into thinking of it as a substitute for their
love. They expect money to convey their
love, and solve all problems in relationships.
Joyce Landorf in her book, Tough And Tender writes, "We seem to
have accepted money as the cure-all for every disease, need, or problem
imaginable. A man who has not said one
real thing to his wife in years shrugs his shoulders and says, 'I don't know
what she wants-she's got everything.
She can go out and buy anything.
She's got the house, clothes, and tons of things. What else does she need?' He has made the money, bought the myth, and
paid for it. All he has to show for
himself is a large brick wall made up of material possessions which stand
solidly between him and his wife. He
thought his money would buy a bridge; instead it has built a
wall,...."
That is why money is so dangerous. It makes so many people sincere in their conviction that it will
be the cure-all. There are few human
beings alive who have not sincerely thought that a million dollars would solve
all of their problems. It could, in
fact, do just that, but it could also add a whole new batch that you never
dreamed of having. Paul says those who
desire to get rich mess their lives up good.
Paul must have had some good examples in his day, but we have many more
in our day. Kit Konolige has written a
book called, The Richest Woman In The World.
It is a fascinating book, not about common place millionaires, but about
those more rare people who have over 150 million. There are only between 400 and 500 such people in the United
States, and 58 of them are women.
Before you turn green with envy, you need to know how much it
cost to be this rich. First of all, you are usually widowed or divorced. If you are still married to a man who has
not worked himself to death, you probably have an unfaithful husband, and a
very unhappy relationship. There is an
excellent chance that you hate your kids, and the feeling is mutual. Many are the stories like that of John Dodge
of the auto fortune, who in 1983 sued his mother for 4 million. She had just gone on a world wide shopping
spree and had spent 11 million, so she was short of cash. She gave him 500,000, and that started a
fight. The feuds and scandals, and the disgraceful behavior of the rich is all
on record. We don't have to go by faith
in Paul's warning, for we have all we need by sight.
Palm Beach Florida is the home of the super rich where their
motto is, anything worth doing is worth doing to excess, and they lived by that
motto. It is a materialistic paradise,
but it is an Eden after the fall, with
drugs, divorce, immorality, suicide, prejudice, and all of the miseries of the
heart that you find in the ghetto. They drowned their sorrows in expensive
champagne rather than cheap wine, but it does not lead to anymore happiness.
Many of those rich people spend a fortune on psychoanalysis. They have guilt that robs them of their peace
of mind, and they can't be bought off.
They live so often in fear. They
have fear of someone kidnaping their children; fear of being robbed, and all
sorts of fears about losing their money.
They are often depressed, for they have nothing to do. They don't have to do anything, and so they
do those things that people do who don't have to do anything: They play, go to balls, socialize, and
seldom do anything creative. This leads
to them missing so much of the joy of life, for they miss creative work. They never know if anyone likes them for
themselves, rather than their money, and they usually learn the hard way that
they are targets of many fortune hunters and con games. Their temptation to do evil is overwhelming,
because they can afford to do anything, and few can escape being corrupted by
such power.
The point of all this, and we haven't started to cover it all,
is that Paul is right, and it can be documented by history and contemporary
life-money is dangerous. If you start
falling in love with it, you will end up married to a financial
frankenstein. It is a monster of a
monster that will make you pay a price
to be rich that is not worth it. Most
people can't afford to be rich, but they do not realize it until it is too
late. It is true that all of these
problems are experienced by the poor and the middle class as well, but they
have the hope that money will solve their problems. The rich have no such hope.
Let's look now at-
II. THE DELIGHTS OF MONEY.
In verses 17-19 Paul stresses two positive delights of money
by saying it is the key to enjoyment, and to the service of others needs. God has given us everything He says for our
enjoyment, and with the excess we can pass it on and help others to enjoy life. Money wisely used is a major factor in happiness,
both for time and eternity, for a wise use of it in time will lay up treasure
for you in eternity. In this chapter
where Paul warns about the danger of the love of money, he also makes it clear
that money can be a powerful agent of love.
Paul's point in saying the love of money is the root of all kinds of
evil was not to get Christians to hate money, but to get them to see that a
proper use of money can make it the root of all kinds of good. You cannot serve God and mammon, but you can
serve God with mammon.
This paragraph of Paul deals with the other side of the
paradox, and makes money the friend of the Christian, and the tool by which he
does the will of God. The majority of
the things we enjoy in life, and which give us pleasure and grateful hearts,
are those things that we have been able to make our own because we have had
money. There is joy, not only in having
food, shelter, and clothing, and all the security and self-esteem these
provide, but there is joy in being able to provide these for those we
love. Paul says that those who do not
provide for their own are worse than infidels.
Our happiness as people, and as Christians, is directly involved with the
money we have to provide for our family.
In order to be generous you have to have an excess of
money. It is hard for a starving man
with a piece of crust to be generous.
Only those who have more than they need can do good deeds, and meet the
needs of those who do not have the
necessities. In other words,
one of the delights of money
is that it gives you the ability to be a source of enjoyment for those beyond
your family. The reason it is more
blessed to give than to receive is, because when you are a giver it means you
have been blest with excess wealth, and you already enjoy what the receiver
does, plus you get the added joy of being the source of their enjoyment. The receiver is blest, but the giver is
doubled blest, and this is one of the delights of money being wisely used. It is a powerful force for good in the world.
Obedience to all of Christ's commands to feed the hungry,
clothe the naked, and in general meet the needs of suffering people, all depend
on having money. The Good Samaritan
could not have taken the beaten man to a inn and paid for his care had he not
had enough money. His loving heart
would not have mattered had he been broke, for he needed money to adequately
meet this man's needs. Jesus could feed
the 5,000 without an investment of funds, but He knows we cannot feed anyone
without money, and so He knows that money is the key to caring about needy
people. The ministries of the church
all over the world depend upon God's people sharing their wealth.
Good money management enables the Christian to have more to give, and it helps the body of Christ do its job more effectively. Pharaoh saw in Joseph a man with a mind for management. He let