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MILKSHAKES AND OBEDIENCE #2

SATURDAY NIGHT VS. SUNDAY MORNING

He was older. She was younger. He was married; she wasn’t. And this very desirable man was saying to her, “I can’t. I love my wife — so I can’t. Plus . . . I love my God. And I can’t do it.” Then, choosing his words carefully, remembering Sunday mornings in church, he described to her how he was raised as a boy. He’d had a religious upbringing; he’d been taught the difference between right and wrong. And even at this moment, the wife he loved, and his own young child, were out splashing around in the swimming pool. He loved them. He’d always loved them. How could he sin against them?

Our series title for this week is this: MILKSHAKES AND OBEDIENCE. If God ordered us, in His Ten Commandments, to drink milkshakes for dinner every night, we’d have no problem obeying Him. But He doesn’t ask that. He asks us to relinquish pride. He asks us to give up our lying and our cheating. He asks us not to get involved with the pretty girls who come around, flirting with us.

Well, you know the man in my story: his name was William Jefferson Clinton. The President of the United States was trying to explain to Monica Lewinsky: “I love my wife.” True, he had made mistakes with this young White House intern. There had been inappropriate contact between him and Monica. But now he was trying to break it off. Because he loved his wife, and because he had a girl named Chelsea. He loved her too.

In the book, Monica’s Story, biographer Andrew Morton describes the Saturday meeting between the two of them. It was a May 24, 1997. As always, she brought the President presents: a golf puzzle and a shirt from Banana Republic. Fully expecting that there would be more of the usual between them — the fumbling, the kissing, the sexual exchanges — she was stunned when President Clinton began to share with her these feelings. “No more. Because I love my wife.” Then, Morton writes, he told her how he knew that what they were doing was wrong in God’s sight as well.

Outside, in the White House pool, Hillary and Chelsea were swimming. But there in the Oval Office, the soul-searching president told this 24-year-old girl about his childhood. He was a religious boy; he went to church. He loved God. He’d given his heart to Jesus Christ as a Southern Baptist. But he’d always lied to his parents. He’d had multiple affairs. By the time he’d turned 40, he was appalled at his own ability to cheat on his wife, and then lie about it.

And as we discussed yesterday, here was a man who loved AND HATED sin. “I hate what we’ve been doing,” he said to Monica Lewinsky. He hated how his personal life was in such conflict with his religious beliefs. And then this unforgettable confession:

“If I had to become a gas-station attendant,” he told her, “to live an honest life and be able to look myself in the mirror and be happy with who I am, that’s what I was prepared to do.”

Advisor Dick Morris, who knew a bit about loving sin too, remarked later that the President was always in conflict between his religious impulses and his sinful ones.

“He has a Saturday-night personality where he gives in to his desires and a Sunday-morning personality where he goes to church full of remorse.”

Well, friend, not all of us today have been impeached by Congress for adultery and obstruction of justice. And yet we also are torn by two loves. If you’re tuned in today to the Voice of Prophecy — a Christian radio program — chances are good that you DO love God. You want to serve Him, obey Him, please Him. I do . . . and you do. I believe that. And yet we have our Saturday night desires too. We love our jealousies. Our little deceptions and the sins they cover up. Our pride. And the Ten Commandments, instead of asking us to do things that are NATURAL to us, that we WANT to do, seem to run right into our Saturday night party. “Have no gods before Me.” “Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain.” “Keep the Sabbath.” “Don’t lie or steal or hate or indulge in lust.” And so we’re conflicted, just like the 42nd President of the United States.

My friend Pastor Morris Venden, who, for several years blessed this ministry as the host of our weekend broadcast, has written at length about the turmoil we all face between what he calls “true obedience” or “false obedience.” True obedience, of course, is when someone says to us, “I command you to drink this milkshake!” “Oh sure,” we respond eagerly. “Love to.” When we obey easily and naturally because we WANT to do that thing, that’s true obedience. But when we grit our teeth and grimace and weep and wail in order to stop lying and committing adultery — when our inner demons keep saying to us, “Do it! Do it! Do it!” — well, that’s not really TRUE obedience. President Clinton, in his confession to Monica that Saturday afternoon, told her how he kept a calendar and marked off on it each day he’d been “(quote) good.” Each day he’d gritted his teeth, choked back his licentious desires, and not indulged his baser passions. But in his heart, he was still a philandering man. Even after May 24, there were still illicit kisses. Lies to his advisors and to Congress. Saturday night was often stronger than Sunday morning.

“An exercise of will power,” Venden writes, “at [the point of temptation] might help me to stop from carrying out the DEED, but it won’t give me genuine victory because all TRUE obedience comes from the heart. . . . Even if I do manage to stop from carrying out the actual temptation, the ‘victory’ is only external.”

So what does a Christian do with these two loves? As Morris Venden has shared in his public ministry for Christ now these last 50 years, the success lies in doing just one thing: Getting to know and love Jesus as a friend. You focus all of your efforts, all of your energies, all of your passions — “like a laser,” President Clinton himself might say — on that one thing: getting to know and love Jesus. You don’t battle your desires and your sins; you don’t grit your teeth. You simply do whatEVER it takes to fall in love and STAY in love with Jesus.

“It is difficult to sin,” he writes, “in the presence of Jesus.”

Which is true, isn’t it? Too often, it seems, the President of the United States was AWAY from the wife he loved. He loved her, but not ENOUGH. And too often, Hillary was out of his sight. The Lord Jesus, apparently, was too often “out of sight, out of mind” as well. We need to keep the person we love in plain view if we want to learn to hate sin.

Here’s a bit more by Pastor Venden:

“May I remind you that if you continue to know Jesus as your personal Friend day by day, if you become meaningfully involved with Him in your private life, if nothing can take you from His side, then you will join John the Beloved in a transformation of character that will be unobtrusive, and imperceptible to you. But your friends will probably notice it.”

Do you remember the Bible story of John the beloved disciple? Early on, Jesus called him, and his brother James, “sons of thunder.” They liked to rumble on a Saturday night; you can read in Luke chapter three where they wanted Jesus to call down heavenly fire on a whole town that didn’t roll out the red carpet with sufficient enthusiasm. And when Jesus would say to John, “Love one another,” John basically wanted to say “Forget it. I’d rather crack their skulls together, Lord.” But years later, in writing his own epistle, what is John saying NOW? After being with Jesus all those years — both in person and as a part of the Christian church? Read it for yourself in First John 3:23. John’s former theme song, “Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting,” has been replaced by “Love One Another.” His desires are now like Christ’s desires. And Venden concludes his thought:

“Whatever sin you’re struggling with” — meaning, if you get with Jesus and stay with Jesus and learn to love Jesus — “whatever sin you’re struggling with, whether it’s known or unknown, whether it’s habitual or cherished or any of the other kinds, it will ultimately fade away.”

Friend, that right there is heavy truth. Are you like me in not always loving the Ten Commandments? Do they sometimes feel unnatural, that you have to FORCE yourself to obey them? Of course you sometimes feel that way, and I do too. Even our righteousness, says the book of Isaiah, isn’t much more than a pile of dirty rags. But if we want the Ten Commandments to be more natural, if we want our obedience to be more instinctive and not just teeth-grittingly hard, the only way to do that is to love the Jesus who gave us those commandments. If we love HIM — slowly but surely, in a lifelong walk together — as Pastor Venden shares from his own lifetime struggle, cherished sin and our Saturday night conflicts will slowly fade away.

It’s like that old Christian song by Helen Lemmel:

“Turn your eyes upon Jesus. Look full in His wonderful face. And the things of earth will grow strangely dim, In the light of His glory and grace.”