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