Making Pleasure Painful

God has stuffed this world with pleasure.  Chocolate.  Coffee.  Sports.  Books. Sunsets.  The universe is popping at the seams with things to enjoy and delight in.

He didn’t have to make the world like this.  But He did.  For what purpose?   God gave us pleasures to help strengthen and sustain us.  He gave us pleasures to enjoy and then to lead us back to Him.  He gave us pleasures to cause us to be thankful and to see His goodness and help us worship Him.

But what do we do with these pleasures that God has given us?  Instead of allowing the pleasures to lead us back to God, we grab hold of the pleasures and bow down to them as if they were God!  What a (paraphrasing John Calvin) ‘monstrous unkindness!  God has stretched out his hand to pour out on us benefits and yet He goes unknown and we cram ourselves full of those pleasures at his expense and forget him.’ 

What’s more, think about what we do the pleasures themselves!   We actually drain the pleasure out of the pleasures God has put in the world when we treat the pleasures as if they were more than they really are. Think of the drunk!  He takes the pleasure of alcohol and tries to drown himself in it and though perhaps he may experience a temporary pleasure, his indulgence in that pleasure ends up creating pain for himself and for the people around him.   Here is a man who is made in the image of God, a glorious thing!  And yet by making earthly pleasure his god, he transforms himself into a beast, and a dangerous one at that.  

This is actually what happens to anyone who tries to overdose on any pleasure! We make the pleasure a pain and drain it of any good when we treat the pleasure if it had the ability to do what only God can do. A man can not fill up his emptiness with more emptiness.  Praise God though.  There is a way to be filled.  What a privilege to be a Christian, and especially an obedient one.  When we look to God as God, pursuing ultimate delight and joy in Him above all things, what happens to us?  We are filled with His fullness and we are enabled to enjoy the pleasures that He has put into the world.  

Pleasure is pleasurable when you let it be what it is, a pleasure, not god. 

A Couple of Reasons to Look at the Excuses You Are Making More Carefully

When convicted or confronted, it is very tempting to defend yourself. And there’s no question that sometimes people who confront you about something actually are wrong and sometimes even your own conscience is off. I was reading Jonathan Edwards this morning though and I think he gives several good reasons to at least slow yourself down before you totally ignore what others have to say or shut your conscience down altogether:

1. Sin is great at lying to you. One of the descriptions of the sinful lifestyle in Ephesians is that of darkness. The first thing sin does when it enters your heart is try to turn out the lights and we all know that it is much more difficult to see something when it is dark out. The way sin wins in your heart is by getting you to like it and when we like someone or something, we usually can find ways to make arguments for it. Think of a friend. If a friend does something questionable, what do you do? You usually find ways to excuse what he did. Sin wants you to think it is your friend, because it knows if you think it is your friend you will more easily ignore the way it is destroying you.

To paraphrase Jonathan Edwards just a little, this is why many men live in ways that are at odds with God’s Word even when they know God’s Word. So a man may know that it is wrong to gossip about someone, but the same lust that leads them to gossip, blinds them to their gossip. The more a man hates his neighbor, the more he will find like he has good reason for gossiping about him and that it is not actually gossip what he is doing.

When men really want to sin, they can find all kinds of arguments excusing that sin and in fact, the louder their conscience shouts at them that what they are doing is sin, the harder they work at finding excuses and justifications for that sin. Instead of bringing our practices to biblical principles and evaluating them, we bring our principles to our practice and try to find a way to make our principles conform to our practices.

2. Satan is great at lying to you. For thousands of years Satan has been trying to sell sin to people and he’s obviously had a lot of practice in making what is terrible look pretty good.

3. Sometimes it is hard to see what you are doing as wrong because you are so used to doing it. When you have been doing the same wrong thing for a long time, it can feel right not because it is right but just because it is such a habit. You can see this sometimes when you start watching television. At first the show you are watching seems awful, but then after a while, you don’t really even notice how terrible it is, because you have watched it so long, what they are doing seems normal.

4. Sometimes it is hard to see what you are doing is wrong because so many other people are doing it. I wonder if you have ever gone to a different culture and you have seen people doing things that you would be totally embarrassed to do, but no one there seems to even notice. Why? Because it is so normal. The more the people around you do something the more you are tempted to do it as well, and what’s more think nothing of doing it.

5. Sometimes it is hard to see what you are doing is wrong because some of what you are doing is right. We don’t always take the time to think about our whole duty. We stop at the surface of what God is calling us to do and feel like if we are taking care of the surface, that’s all there is to it. We go to church and we listen to good sermons and we are nice to people that we like and we don’t go to dirty movies and we think, well that’s pretty much what being a Christian is all about. Quoting Jonathan Edwards again, “Perhaps their thoughts will be wholly taken up about religious duties, such as prayer in secret, reading the Scriptures and other good books, going to public worship and giving diligent attention, keeping the sabbath, and serious meditation. They seem to regard these things, as though they comprised their duty in its full extent, and as if this were their whole work; and moral duties towards their neighbours, their duties in the relations in which they stand, their duties as husbands or wives, as brethren or sisters, or their duties as neighbours, seem not to be considered by them.”

I wonder sometimes if the more we are tempted to excuse a sin, the harder we ought to look at whether or not it really is sin. Not every confrontation is one we need to heed, obviously; but certainly knowing what we know about our own hearts and the nature of sin and temptation, every confrontation does give us an opportunity to look once again and examine whether or not we are living in a way that is truly pleasing to the Lord.

Just Another Example of How Desperately Grace is Needed

There are many interesting and surprising parts to the story of Noah and the flood.

Take what life was like on the earth in that time. I mean, who are the Nephilim exactly? What is up with the sons of God and the daughters of man? Imagine being Noah, the only righteous man on earth. Or being asked by God to make a boat? Strange, but not as strange as watching animals like lions and tigers and bears, oh my! come directly to you and walk straight in to the ark and then having God tell you to get into the floating zoo with them immediately afterwards.

For me though, while everything that happened before Noah got in the ark and everything that must have been happening while he was on the ark is fun to think about, there’s nothing nearly as shocking as what happened when he got off.

Think about this. Walk with me for a moment through exactly what the text tells us about Noah and what was happening to him. Don’t worry, I will be quick:

Noah finds favor in God’s eyes.
He is described as a righteous man, blameless in his generation.
Noah walked with God.
God chooses to rescue Noah and his family from coming judgment.
Noah does everything God commands.
He has conversations with God.
He gets in the boat God tells him to make with a whole bunch of animals God miraculously brought and God shuts him in.
He watches the entire world be judged.
He waits.
God remembers him.
God brings him out of the ark.
Noah kills some of the animals he brought with him on the ark to make sacrifices to God.
God makes a promise to not judge the earth in the same way again.
God blesses Noah.
God establishes a covenant with Noah.
Noah starts working as a kind of farmer.
Noah gets drunk and lays uncovered in his tent.

What?

I realize the emphasis of this story lies on Noah’s son Ham’s sin, but I still think this is so shocking. It also reminds me of the constant vigilance that is needed in this war against our own sinful desires, and even more than that of how desperately we as human beings need God’s grace and especially Jesus, the Savior to come and fix us and everything else.

Can we save ourselves?

I don’t think so. Let’s try this thought experiment out for a moment. What if God took the most righteous person on the planet and started all over again? It wouldn’t be too long after that, that righteous man would turn from God to abuse the very blessings God had given him.

Just look at Noah.

What is the goal of studying theology?

“The ultimate aim of biblical theology is to bring us to our knees in worship and prayer.”

Bruce Waltke

Ten Helps for Fighting Sexual Temptation part five

How can you deal with the tremendous pressure you face to constantly be feeding your sinful desires at all costs?

Because it is unrelenting.

Paul in Ephesians 5:3ff gives a number of helps. We have walked through seven so far.

1. Pursue a self-sacrificial lifestyle.
2. Commit to taking a radical approach.
3. Develop a deeper appreciation for your new identity in Christ.
4. Practice thanksgiving.
5. Speak the truth into your own life and have friends who will do the same on a regular basis.
6. Be an idol smasher.
7. Remember and delight in the inheritance that God has for you in Christ.

8. Don’t let yourself be fooled.

Quoting Paul, “don’t let anyone deceive you with empty words.”

In other words, you have a responsibility not to be an idiot. Sinful desires like sexual immorality and greed come with arguments, but if you look very closely at the arguments they make, you will find that they are actually empty, in other words, not based on substance or connected to reality.

Think about greed for a moment. What does it promise? Satisfaction. I must have this to be content. But watching children for about ten minutes will make it very clear that desires like that are fickle beasts. A child can be so passionate about a toy, crying even if he doesn’t have it; get it, and five minutes later be crying that he doesn’t have something else he wants, having totally forgotten about the toy he wanted only a little while before. Obviously, getting what you want doesn’t produce contentment. How many examples of discontent rich people do we need to meet before we realize maybe the answer isn’t found in material possessions. We have known that for a long time, but yet, you know what, when you want something badly enough all of the sudden, those empty arguments sound kind of tempting. Or security. Doesn’t greed often promise security? But how is it on delivering? The results aren’t nearly as impressive given the fact that Rockefeller and every other really insanely rich person of his era is dead.

Sexual sin, too. The world is definitely making arguments as to why you should give in to every single desire you have ever had. In fact, the person who says that sometimes what we want is wrong, evil even – is labeled a bigot, harsh, unfair, wanting people’s worst. But think! Sometimes the noise from the world is so loud it is difficult to remember what God’s saying. It helps me though to remember who’s giving me the advice. For the most part, incredibly self-centered people. It is a little hard to trust people who are spending their lives focused on themselves when they give advice. But God. It is much easier to trust someone who gave up His life for me!

When Paul commands us not to allow ourselves to be deceived, he is telling us that we have a responsibility to make sure we aren’t allowing our lives to be guided by the misinformation we are receiving from the world. Instead, we must work hard at studying the gospel and the Word of God in order to understand what the will of the Lord is. In other words, we need to think about what we are thinking about. Sin does its worst when we aren’t thinking in ways that are true. When you begin to feel overwhelming desires to do something that you know is wrong, stop and look at what excuses you are giving yourself for doing it. Often, if you are honest you will see that those excuses are lies, and what’s worse, not even very convincing lies at that!

Are You Wise?

“Watch carefully how you walk, not as unwise but as wise…”

It seems a little funny that Paul would have to tell people and especially tell Christian people that they should live as wise people, but the fact is he does because so often we don’t.

We need to be commanded to live in a way that is wise because many of us don’t.

You can be an intelligent person who knows a lot of information about the Bible and still be living your life in a way that is not wise, because you see, when the Bible talks about being wise, it is not talking about simply knowing information, the emphasis with this word wisdom instead is on the application of our knowledge of the Bible to our everyday lives.

Wisdom, it is a masterful understanding, skill, expertise in living.

A wise person then, doesn’t just know what is true, he knows what difference the truth makes on the way he lives his life. He is able to use the knowledge he has well. And Paul is challenging us to look carefully at our lives and see if this knowledge that we are gaining as we go to church Sunday after Sunday is actually changing the way we live. He wants us to stop and look if we are becoming better and better at actually applying truth to our lives.

Now how? What do you look for? Where do you look if you want to know if you are growing in wisdom?

You see exactly where you should look at the beginning of verse 16.

You should look at the way you are using your time. This is the means or manner by which the command to be wise is carried out. Those who are wise and understand the everyday significance of the gospel will have a “right attitude towards time.”

Specifically, Paul says that wise people “make the best use of the time.” Other translations are, “making the most of every opportunity,” “to take advantage of every chance.” It literally means, “to redeem the time” or to say it more simply, “to buy back the time.”

You can think about it like this.

A few years ago, during the World Cup, the McDonalds Restaurant near us had a clock on its wall. It wasn’t a normal clock however. This clock was counting down the seconds until the World Cup began. Each time you looked up at it, there was less time than there was before.

I think it is helpful to imagine your life on earth as having a clock like that. A clock counting down the minutes until you stand before God on judgment day.

Tick, tock, tick, tock.

Now, if you live until you are eighty, you have something like 42 million minutes on the clock the moment you are born. For me, that would mean if I were looking up at that clock right now, there would only be something like 22 million minutes left. Though of course the average life span in RSA is a lot less than 80 years, it is more like 50 and that would mean I only have 683 thousand minutes left.

Which sounds like a lot I know, but it feels like a lot less when you look up at that imaginary countdown clock I was speaking to you about and you start to see minute after minute, falling off, gone for good.

And the fact is whether you like it or not, that is actually the reality, we don’t have that clock on our wall at home, but you do only have so many minutes in this body, on this earth, and that is a reality that should make a difference in the way you live your life.

Especially because, as Paul says here, the days are evil.

Now can I tell you what is so crazy? Many of us we use the fact that the days are evil as an excuse for wasting our time. We look at the people doing wicked things and we think, well what does God expect of me, in a world like this? That is the exact opposite of the way we should think.

A doctor when he is on holiday and there is no one around who is sick, you know what, he can afford to waste his time. He can sit on his chair at the beach and just watch the ocean. But that same doctor when he is at the hospital and there are sick people dying all around him, he can’t just sit there and waste time. Can you imagine if you found a doctor in the emergency room sleeping as someone was lying there on the cot in front of him needing to be operated on immediately and you wake this doctor up and you say, hey, man, what are you doing? And he says to you, ahh, I figured I might as well go to sleep because there are so many sick people all around. No. The fact that there are so many sick people all around is more of a reason for you to get to work because you are a doctor, and the fact that this world is evil and there are so many people who are rebelling against God all around is more of a reason for us as believers to be careful and wise about the way we use our time.

Are you?

Many people, even many Christians, aren’t.

Some people spend most of their lives totally ignoring the fact that their life here on earth is short. I wonder about you. Do you ever wake up and think, I am one day closer to standing before God. Did you ever look at your life and say, I only have so much time, how I am going to use it? Are you just letting your life happen to you, drifting along, or are you carefully and deliberately using your life and the moments you have been for God’s purpose.

I want to stress God’s purpose, because there is another unwise way of looking at time; there are people, many people who know life is short and they have decided to use the time they have to pursue their own pleasures. They know they don’t have much time, so they deliberately waste their lives and the moments they have on themselves.

That is so foolish too, because the breath you have and the time you have been given is God’s not yours, and the decisions you make here have an impact on your eternal future. This is something Paul himself has told us back in Ephesians 5:5 where he says, “For you may be sure of this that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure or who is covetous that is an idolater has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Let no one deceive you with empty words for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.” The person who spends his life on the pursuit of sinful, temporary desires purchases for himself eternal wrath. That is crazy!

I imagine someone who was offered a second, a moment, of sort of pleasure, not real pleasure certainly but a second of mixed pleasure, but the cost he had to pay for that moment of pleasure would be a year of intense pain? You would say you would have to be a fool to pay that price, and yet that is the way many people are with their lives.

The fact that your life is short here means you should focus more on the life to come, but for many people, they do the exact opposite, the fact their life is short causes them to focus less on the life to come, and that is not wise.

A man named Francis Chan, he’s a preacher in the United States, he gives an illustration I just love. He says imagine a string that starts here and then goes on and on and on and on and on from here and has no end. That’s the whole of your life. Your now and your future after death. Now on that string, your life now, it equals about not even an inch, a centimeter maybe of the string, that how much it takes up in comparison to the rest and yet, there are many people who are consumed with that centimeter and the fact that their life is going on for so much longer after they die makes no impact on the way they are using their time now.

How about you?

No seriously. How about you?

What Paul is telling us here, is that as believers in the gospel, we need to stop and reflect, whether or not we are using the time God’s given us in a way that matches up with the realities we profess to believe and embrace in the gospel. If we really believe that we are living for a moment in an evil age, after which we are going to stand before God and be held accountable for the way in which we live now, then it MUST impact the way we use our time. We MUST attempt to make the best use of the moments we have here for the gospel’s sake.

How to Be Rich without Choking Yourself

“Someone might ask whether it is right for God’s children to be rich, to employ the good things which God so generously gives and to derive pleasure from them. After all, our text says “Woe to you who laugh. Woe to you rich. Woe to you when men speak well of you.” “What’s this?” you say. “Is it wrong to lead a good and virtuous life and to be well spoken of? Doesn’t St. Paul urge us to do good in the sight of all? Don’t we read somewhere else that every mouth should be stopped and that men should glorify God when they see us walking in his fear?” We might, then, think it harsh and puzzling that the rich, the comfortably off, and the happy should be condemned.

Now that is not what our Lord is saying here. What he is condemning is the attitude of those who, intent on living well in this world, as so stupid and senseless as to forget there is a heavenly kingdom. This will be clearer if we think of how believers behave when times are good. If God sends them peace and prosperity, they will give him the praise; they will use his gifts soberly, endeavouring always to live an upright life. They will not want to squander such gifts, but they will recognize them as blessings from God. Or again, if someone possesses a rare gift of God’s Spirit, he will not pretend he doesn’t have it, for that would be mere hypocrisy. So whether believers are rich, or in robust health, or wonderfully endowed with the Spirit’s gifts, they acknowledge that God’s favour is its only source. Their joy is real, and so is their thanksgiving. That is how they will use the good tings of this present life.

Nevertheless, while life for believers may be easy today, they will be ready tomorrow to endure whatever afflictions God may send them. He may, perhaps, take from them the goods he has given. They are prepared to surrender them, since they know they received them on one condition–that they should hand them back whenever God should choose. The believer reasons this way: “Rich today, poor tomorrow. If God should change my circumstances so that ease gives way to suffering and laughter to tears, it is enough to know that I am still his child. He has promised to acknowledge me always as his, and in that I rest content.

That, I repeat, is how believers will behave. They will live soberly, tightening their belts if that is necessary; they will be self-controlled, telling themselves that though they may rise to eminent rank and enjoy untold pleasure, they must set their sights on higher things. The good things given by God are but a path to lead us to him, a ladder to ascend on high, not a tomb in which to bury ourselves. We should not cling to happiness or greet its passing with a hollow laugh, for it is fleeting. Nor should we exult when men applaud us, as if we had already attained our reward for a virtuous life on earth. No, we are determined to press on through good report and bad. Such is the measured and moderate path pursued by the believer. We do not get drowsy, still less intoxicated, when times are good. And we are always willing to abandon everything if God requires. This is not how it is with unbelievers. Prosperity goes immediately to their heads, fills them to bursting; they are so befuddled that not once do they spare a thought for God or the spiritual life. In time they grow hard, and when misfortune comes they grind their teeth and blaspheme against God.

This is how we are to interpret the woes spoken against the rich, the satisfied, those who laugh and are glad. Remember Job, who amidst his suffering proclaimed: “If we have received good things from God’s hand, why should we not also receive the bad?” There is no doubt that this was something which Job had thought hard about–a treasure, so to speak, to be disclosed at the right time and place. We see then that although God may spare us and give us reason to rejoice, we should expect to receive both good and bad from his hand. Not reluctantly or because we are compelled, but meekly and cheerfully, obedient to his will. For he must rule us, not according to our own likes but according to what he knows is best and most expedient for us. We are confident that all things will work for our salvation: that is our motive for rejoicing.

That is the sense of Jesus’ teaching in this passage. To be rich, to be glad, to be satisfied is to be drunk on prosperity and to live the life of senseless beasts. If we are comfortably off, it is not so that we may cover ourselves with gold and silver, or boast of owning fields and meadows, like those whose goal in life is to have everything they want. Those kinds of people are as good as dead: they bury themselves in their perishable possessions and are incapable of seeing heaven above. As for us, we must take heed to ourselves lest the Son of God condemn us with his own lips: only by looking to him for continual blessing can we escape the misfortune promised here. We are taught, then, to pass through this world as strangers, convinced, as St. Paul says, that those who have should be as those who have not. No one would deny that those who have plenty to live on meet many more temptations and run more risk of falling. They need, therefore, to turn constantly to God, and to learn that his gifts are meant to draw them closer to him, to quicken their love and to encourage their obedience. The good things they receive must never bewitch them to the point that they become captives to the world.

In the midst of plenty we must guard against greedy excess, lest we choke ourselves and bring this curse upon us: Woe to you who are filled. If we are to be filled, it is in a different way–by contemplating God’s face, as we read in Psalm 16. We should regard material possessions simply as props to help us, until we see the Father face to face. He is our bliss and happiness. By all means let us laugh, but in the manner of those who are ready to weep should that be God’s will. Our joy should be joined with sadness, and with compassion for those who suffer. No one should live apart from others, and all should rejoice whenever God’s name is honored. Yes, rejoice, even when we have reason to feel sad and gloomy. Conversely, it may be that we are fine, in the best of spirits. But supposing there is some dire trouble in the church, or God’s name is blasphemed, held up to shame or ridicule–that should give us cause for grief, grief deeper even than the joy we felt. At such a time we ought to moderate the happiness which earthly blessings bring. We ought, as the proverb says, to mix water with our wine.”

John Calvin, Sermons on the Beatitudes (Banner of Truth), pp. 77-80.