Freedom from the Enemy


Have you ever had to tell a child “no” more than once? Ever had to do it more than ten times in the same conversation? You know what I’m talking about. You say no and they just keep coming, like a middleweight boxer they dart in and out hitting you with jabs and whines and why nots. You keep defending yourself but you’re getting tired, your legs are giving out. You just want to sit down. But you can’t get out of that ring.

I was in one such verbal contest with my son one time and he complained, “You always say no to me!”

“It’s my job to say no,” I told him.

I wasn’t trying to be cruel or even flippant. I just don’t want to be a parent that caves in to every whim of their child. Sometimes saying no is the best gift you can give a child.

Jesus once said “This generation is like children whining for what they want and complaining when they don’t get it.” (Matthew 11.16-17)

There is something about us, even when we are young, that is selfish and wrong. Christians call this “wrongness” Original Sin. We’ll get to the “original” part in a little bit. But basically, sin is not just the wrong things we do, but it is a part of us, a disease of our nature. We are not yet out of our mother’s wombs and already something is wrong in our natures.

I tried to point out the doctrine of original sin to our recent graduates. This doctrine, if you think about it, can be curiously liberating. Speaking to a gathering of youth , a preacher once encouraged his listeners to begin a prayer these words: “Lord, I am the failure that you always knew I would be.”

Now, maybe that thought is not Commencement Speech material, but it expresses a deep truth nonetheless.

St. Paul himself, much later than his teenage years wrote this,

“I don’t know what I’m doing. I do the very opposite of what I want to do. I want to do good but I keep on doing wrong. . .God’s word tells me this good truth about sin - it’s living in me. It’s in my body, in my will. I can want to do right but I have trouble following through. In fact, it’s impossible for me to do the right thing. I am always obeying the evil in me.” Romans 7.15-20 (my paraphrase)


It’s like the football coach once said, “We have met the enemy and they are us.”


In his book, Beautiful Boy, David Scheff writes about the years of torment of his son’s drug addiction. What Scheff wrestles with to the brink of mental and emotional collapse is how could his bright, beautiful, talented, kind and loving son turn into someone, something, that he no longer recognized? It was the drugs sure. But the drugs did something to his son’s mind and heart. Or maybe the drugs revealed something that was already there.

The most potent, insidious, and persistent enemy any of us will ever face is the enemy within. Paul calls it “the body of this death,” because death is the only place it leads to. How did we get to be this way? How did this happen? The Bible says what’s gone wrong in human beings went wrong a long, long time ago, pretty much at the very beginning.


Well, the original sin goes back to Adam and Eve in the garden. Remember that is new creation is an expression of the love of God and really the character of the Trinity – as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit live in community, so their love is expressed in the creation. God tells Adam and Eve that they have free reign of the Garden – enjoy. But one thing you must not do – eat of that one tree.

The question soon comes up, “Well, why not? What’s so bad about eating of that tree?”
“What is bad, anyway?”

God seems to be saying to humanity, “Obey me about the tree just because you love me. Just for my sake.”

How many times have I said this to one of my sons, “Just because I asked you to.”

God says, “Just because.”

And we failed. We don’t just break a rule, we lose relationship. The world loses something – it’s wholeness, it’s purity, it’s balance. The world stops thriving.

But God doesn’t leave us there. The Son of God is born into the human community to begin a new humanity. Paul calls Jesus “the last Adam.” The first Adam was tested in the Garden of Eden, the last Adam in the Garden of Gethsemane. The first Adam knew that he would live if he obeyed God about the tree. But he didn’t. The last Adam was also tested by what Paul called a “tree,” the Cross. Listen to this, Jesus knew that he would be crushed if he obeyed his Father. And he still did.

The first Adam gave up his freedom in disobedience. The last Adam, by his obedience, made a way for our freedom finally and completely. What sort of freedom am I talking about? I’m talking about the freedom to be other than what sin dictates us to be. I’m talking about Freedom from the Enemy, which is a Freedom for God.


Listen to the invitation Jesus gives:

“Come to me, all you that are weary and heavy- laden, and I will give you rest. . .”

Sounds good so far, doesn’t it?

“Take my yoke upon you and learn from me. . .”

What is a yoke? It’s what beasts of burden, oxen in particular, have around their necks and shoulders to tie them together and tie them to the plow or wagon.

That doesn’t sound as attractive.

Jesus anticipates that reaction, perhaps.

“I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Jesus seems to be saying that if you will hitch yourself to my wagon you’ll find that the going is maybe not as hard as it might appear. You’ll find the peace and rest you’re looking for.

There is a choice before us, to choose to follow Jesus or to continue our own way. To be sure, when you choose Jesus you say no to other things. You lose options.

Timothy Keller writes, “Unless you are willing to experience the loss of options and the individual limitation that comes from being in committed relationships, you will remain out of touch with your own nature and the nature of things. You will never get a sense of true self by standing still and making everything revolve around your needs and interests.”

Saying no to your sinful self opens up the freedoms of the open road of following Jesus. Perhaps it’s time for you to get moving.

The Restoration

In the film, O Brother Where Art Thou, the three friends who broke out of jail together at one point cross paths with the legendary bank robber, George “Babyface” Nelson. Before they know what’s happening, Nelson takes them with him to rob a bank. After the successful heist, the four men are sitting around a fire that night counting their loot. Delmar, one of the friends, smiles and exclaims,

“Jackin’ up banks, yesirr. I can understand how a fellar could get a lot of pleasure out of that. It almost makes me wish I hadn’t got saved.”

You see, Delmar and his friend Peter had just been baptized at a revival meeting. Delmar rightly understood that he was a different. Even though their friend, Everett, called them both “dumber than a bag of hammers,” Delmar understood that now he was a Christian, he couldn’t go around “jackin’ up banks,’ even though it might tempting to do so.

If only some that call themselves Christians were as smart as Delmar. If only more people understood the connection between being Christian and leaving old sinful ways behind.

Who of us has not abused the grace and forgiveness of God with our stubborn sin?
When we sin as believers, we cheapen the grace we have received.

St. Paul protests this cheapening of grace:

“Just because we have grace does that mean we can keep on sinning? No! Sin belongs to the old person we once were, not to the new person we are in Christ. We are new because we are baptized into Christ’s life. We were baptized into his death and baptized into new life. We will be resurrected just like he was.” Romans 6.1-5

Our sin is an offense to God. Sin breaks the rules that are for our good. Much more than that, sins breaks relationship. Now, I’m asked sometimes, if I sin once, does God turn his back on me? No, just like when your friend offends you, you don’t quit on them. But at the same time, persistent offense sure puts a strain on the relationship.

In his Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis has a seen where the Pevensie children meet the Christ-figure, Aslan. Aslan is a Lion, the Lion.

Lucy, the youngest child, asks a Narnian, “Is he (the Lion) safe?”

“Safe? If there’s anyone that can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking is braver than most or else just plain silly.

“Then he isn’t safe?” asked Lucy.

“Of course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King.”

You don’t have to be any smarter than Delmar to know that it’s a healthy thing to give God proper reverence and fear. Yes, fear. I know these days a lot of people want a God who is warm and kind and pretty tolerant of things all in all. We want a grandpa or a grandma up there who always smiles upon us and give us treats and would never really discipline too much. We don’t want to hear about a God who gets angry at sin, our sin, especially. But it’s the goodness of God that is the source of his anger.

Jesus, says, fear God.

“Do not fear those who can kill the body but can’t touch the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both body and soul in hell . . .whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven.” Matthew 10.28, 33

Remember who is most important here! Remember whose opinion of you really counts. It’s God’s. Jesus said if in comparison to your love and devotion to God, your devotion to your spouse, your parents, your children, doesn’t almost seem like hate, then you are really missing the point of your life. Jesus is exaggerating these differences in relationship to get our attention.

It’s our souls at stake here, friends. It’s eternity. That’s pretty big.

We know the grace of Jesus Christ saves us for eternity. But our salvation is not just getting a ticket punched or our hand stamped. It’s getting us dead, buried, and reborn. That’s salvation!


The power of Jesus that gives us new life is the power that will transform us into “heaven-ready” persons, if you will. God wants to make us ready for eternity with him. He will have us ready so he can “set us loose with confidence in the universe.” Adam and Eve were once set loose in the Garden. This time around it will last forever.

We are a key part of God’s big plan to bring history to fulfillment. God is going to transform the earth and the heavens. He’s not going to flood them. He’s not going to allow them to be blown up. He is going to set up everything, finally, just as he wants it to be.

“The creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.” Romans 8.21

This vision of the End is very different from the vision that all other religions provide. In other faiths the end of human history is seen as the illusion of the world melting away or spiritual souls escaping the physical world. Those are the visions that Buddhism, Hinduism, and countless cults portray. Life is a cycle that you work to get out of eventually. You know, karma, dummy, as Joy says on My Name Is Earl.

In the Christian vision, human history is a big story which is part of the bigger story of God’s writing. Timothy Keller says, “It is hard to overemphasize the uniqueness of this vision.”

As believers in Christ we not only care about the salvation of all souls (unlike say Islam, Mormonism, or Jehovah’s Witnesses, which make heaven an exclusive club indeed) but we are called to participate in the transformation of the world on every level. To be sure, the new heaven and new earth will be ushered in, not by the sweat of our brows, but by the Second Coming of Jesus at the trumpet call. But our personal transformation and the transformation of the world go hand in hand.

Look, Resurrection means the beginning of the Real Life, the Real Thing. We are going to know each other and be known. We won’t be walking around as ghosts, but as more real persons than we’ve ever been. It’s like when I’m coaching my 8, 9, and 10 year old baseball players. They do their best and they play well often. They’re in the game and the game is baseball. But then most of them move up to Little League and it’s the same game but it’s a different game. It’s a better game because they have grown. They’re better. They look at themselves and say, “I’m not the same player I was. I’m better. I’m what I knew I could be.”

God knows what we all can be. God knows what the Universe can be. Only God knows these things right now. But someday everyone will know because every one will see it for themselves at the Restoration of All Things.


At the end of the Chronicles of Narnia, Aslan tells the children this:

“The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning.”

And as He spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read; which goes on forever; in which every chapter is better than the one before.

Substitutes

I’m speaking to our graduates today. The rest of you can listen in too. If you graduates asked us older folks about our high school experience, we would probably love to tell you about it. Unfortunately, none of you seemed to be much interested. But I tell you what, if you asked most of us if we wanted to go back and relive those times, I bet a lot of us would say. . . no, thank you. That’s me. I don’t want to be a teenager again. Well, I would like to be able to play basketball like I could when I was a teenager, but that’s about it. I don’t want to go back to high school. It was hard. I was always having to prove myself. It was exhausting. Graduates, if you have had struggles or have been depressed, you probably had good reason to. I’ve got two pieces of good news for you:

The first piece of good news is – being a teenager is hard, but soon you won’t be one anymore.

The second piece of good news is – you are a wretched sinner.

Yes, this is good news. I’ll tell you why later.. First, we must understand what the Bible says about us, that deep down in every human being there is something seriously wrong. It’s a sickness that the Bible calls sin. It causes us to do bad things. But the bad things we do, the rules we break, are only symptoms of the sickness.

I know when I speak to youth that what they think they will hear from me is, “Behave yourselves.” That’s not what I’m saying. Behave yourself is something we say to children. I want to tell you the truth. You are becoming an adult. You need stronger medicine.

At its heart, Sin is a broken relationship with God. Sin is like having a loving husband or wife and then cheating on them. That’s what we’ve done with God. We’ve cheated on the One who loves us most.

What is the first of the Ten Commandments? Anyone, anyone?

“Have no other gods before Me.” Deuteronomy 5.7

That’s a cry for love, friends, from God!. Sin is not just doing bad things, but making good things into gods. You can do this with most anything good. You can take a good thing and make it an ultimate thing. You can make a god out of good grades, baseball, looks, popularity, krispy kreme donuts. This making of gods is a never-ending production these days. It fosters a competition that drives our lives.

Donald Miller says that comparison and competition in our culture is a disease. If you want to be loved in this sick society then here are a few things you could do:

Slam-dunk a basketball. There’s not much intelligence involved here. If you are a short person or can’t jump, you could do what I do, buy a six or seven foot hoop.

Be Good –Looking. Again, not much intelligence involved necessarily in this .But you can also buy things to improve in this area. You can buy injections and suctions and lifts and tucks and makeovers. Makeovers are a way of saying, geez, someone screwed up when they made me the first time. This all requires money.

Have a lot of Money. People will like you, or, at least like your stuff. Make sure you don’t run out of stuff.

Be Really Smart. This doesn’t really make people like you, but it may help you to get lots of money and marry someone really good-looking.

Graduates, if you’ll notice, these things are not really fair. Not everybody can do all these things. The odds are against you. The fix is in. I don’t have to tell you this. You just finished three years of high school.

At the Memorial Day Parade we were waiting in line to start and I saw a poster advertising the Perfect Teen. How’s that for advertising! That caught my attention – the Perfect Teen. What does said creature look like, this perfect teen? The teen I saw was good-looking and I’m sure an all-around fine person. But you know, there is no perfect teen, just like there’s no perfect middle-aged guy. There’s just us wretched sinners.

“There is no distinction; since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Romans 3.23

By sin we break relationship with God and then we try to substitute that “glory” with our lesser gods.

“A life not centered on God leads to emptiness. Building our lives on something besides God not only hurts us if we don’t get our desires filled, but also if we do,” Tim Keller writes.

King David was like this. He had everything a man could want – a nice house, lots of money, kids, good-looking wivesss. . .aha, I see the seed of discontent – but fulfilling his desires somehow didn’t fill his heart. His eyes were wandering around and lit on Delilah. She was another man’s wife. But he had to have her. “The heart wants what the heart wants,” right? So David reaches out and takes her. He has the power to do this. And he thinks to himself, if only no one calls me on this, I will be golden. What David doesn’t realize at the time is that the only way he can be in worse trouble is if no one does confront him. Fortunately for David, someone does.

Again, Timothy Keller writes, “Few of us get all of our wildest dreams fulfilled in life, and therefore it is easy to live in the illusion that if you were as successful, wealthy, popular, or beautiful as you wished, you’d finally be happy and at peace.. That just isn’t so.”

Cynthia Heimel, a columnist for the Village Voice wrote about all the people she knew in New York City before they became famous movie stars. They worked at the makeup counter at Macy’s, at movie theaters selling tickets, waiting tables, etc. When they became successful, every one of them became more angry, manic, unhappy, and unstable than they had been when they were working hard to get to the top. Heimel writes, “That giant thing they were striving for, that fame thing that was going to make everything OK, that was going to fill them with happiness had happened, and the next day they woke up and they were still them. The disillusionment turned them howling and insufferable.”

When you put anything in else where God should be, all you do is dig the hole deeper and wider. And no matter how much stuff you put in that hole, the emptiness never fills.
It is a sickness unto death. What is worse than failing at the competition to be the best? Succeeding at that competition. If we win the world, we lose our soul.

But I told you there would be good news: You know what’s wrong now. And you should know there is a remedy.

The remedy is a relationship with Jesus Christ.

The Lord of Life will come and be your life and show you how to live. Your heart will never be at rest until it rests in Jesus.

“I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit. Apart from me you can do nothing.” John 15.5

C.S. Lewis says that Christianity is both the easiest and the hardest thing you can do. “Christ says ‘Give me ALL. I don’t want just this much of your time and this much of your money and this much of your work. I want you. Hand over the whole natural self –All the desires, not just the ones you think wicked but the ones you think innocent – the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead.”

Remember, no substitutes. Nothing can substitute for God in your life, especially not your efforts at good behavior. Jesus wants more than that. He wants you.

I know you all. I know the gift of faith in each one of you. I know that from here you can go in one of two directions – with God or away from God. I pray for you to make the good and wise choice.

“Everyone who hears these words of mine and does them is like the wise man who built his house on the rock. The rains fell and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock.” Matthew 7.24-25