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“AND THEIR SHOUTS PREVAILED” #4
SUPERSONIC SPEEDING AWAY FROM SIN
There’s a cute cartoon still lying around, coming from the inventive mind of Far Side creator Gary Larson. It shows a massive bookcase filled with expensive volumes; unfortunately, they all carry titles like Professor Johnson’s Mathematical Story Problems, 101 Brain-Cramping Story Problems, The Definitive Collection of Horrific Story Problems, Story Problems For Dummies, and so on. There are no romance novels, nothing by John Grisham, no books with pretty pictures. Just row after row of these dust-covered books filled with stories about how if Joe can paint a house in three days, and Moe takes four, how long would it take them to do it together as long as it isn’t raining or the Super Bowl is on? If you invest part of your $5000 at four percent, and the rest at six, how much at each rate in order to . . . blah blah blah. Gripping stuff like that. And the caption below this horrid collection of books reads: “The public library in hell.”
Well, friend, we’ll maybe use that story again sometimes in studying the doctrine of judgment and punishment. But let me segue from that to a math story problem that actually takes Christians to a very real spiritual temptation. Here’s the brain twister for this Thursday, so get out a sheet of clean paper and a pencil. Set-up: you have to drive two miles, and have exactly two minutes to go from Point A to Point B. Good so far? Two miles in two minutes. But now the rub: for the first mile, you foolishly have only gone thirty miles an hour (instead of immediately gunning it up to 60 like you should have.) Question: how fast would you have to travel in that second mile in order to still meet the goal? Now, friend, if you’re in your car on the freeway right now, please don’t try to solve this by actually doing it. This is a math question, and not a real-life situation. (That’s true of most algebra story problems, isn’t it?)
If you’re the typical weekend warrior at math, you probably said something very exciting like 90 miles an hour. Thinking that 30 on the first half, then 90 on the second . . . would still average out to 60 and you’d be all right. There’s just one flaw in that thinking. If you drive the first mile going only 30, guess what? The two minutes are already up! Time has expired! You could travel the second mile going at the speed of light, and you still wouldn’t make it. The experiment has already crashed (hopefully, you didn’t too) at the end of Mile #1.
Now, why’d we start our Bible discussion out there on the drag-racing strip? So often in the realm of sin and temptation, and our tactics against Lucifer’s armies, we look at a past failed performance and conclude: “Well, THAT didn’t work!” And the obvious thing to say is this: “I guess next time I’ll just have to try harder. Same path, but now I’ll go faster.” Clench the fists tighter if it’s a cigarette temptation, press the lips tighter if it’s a swear word threatening to burst forth into the open, squeeze the brain muscles closer together if hateful thoughts begin to push at the hinges of your mind. We think of our battles with the devil as a kind of spiritual stairmaster, and the thing to do after a failure is to turn up the speed on the machine.
And you know, that can actually be a part of our efforts to honor God by obeying. If you’re determined to support His kingdom by getting to church every weekend – and promptly by 11:00 a.m. – then trying harder, and setting an alarm, and setting out your shiny shoes and your car keys the night before might all be good disciplines. God’s not going to pick you up or me up and just fling us down the freeway to the church parking lot. We might actually need to try harder when the temptation comes to go to church late, or to skip it entirely.
We’ve quoted from James 4:7, where the Bible promises:
“Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.”
And maybe there are times where we resist him only a little bit, and the hosts of heaven encourage us to resist him harder. I’m reminded of a tough verse in Hebrews 12, where the author suggests in rather strict King James English:
“Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin.”
On the other hand, I do need to say this. We put ourselves on dangerous ground if we decide that the key to facing Satan’s armies is to simply try harder. In a way, that is tantamount – back to our story problem – to trying to just drive faster every time we are late. I have a friend who used to take that attitude. “I can get from any Point A to any Point B,” he boasted, “in any specified amount of time. I just keep going faster and faster until mathematically . . . it works!” And you know, that actually succeeded for a while, even on our L.A. freeways, until one evening when he had an important lecture to deliver out in the Inland Empire. Between his lackadaisical late start, and a couple of sig alerts on the freeway, he suddenly had to face a sad reality. From where he was, and with where the church was and how much time was left remaining on his loudly ticking appointment clock, the only way he was going to get to the church on time was in a private jet plane, not in a beige Datsun B210 four-cylinder sedan.
And the same is true in our lives. There are some spiritual wars that we simply cannot win by trying harder. Because when we try harder, Satan does too. We gird up our loins, and he just adds more demons to our particular case. Going back to our Pontius Pilate illustration from Monday, the crowd just gets louder and louder and louder – “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!” – until there’s no way in the world to zoom yourself away to victory. The Bible quietly tells the tragic conclusion: “And their shouts prevailed.”
What a difficult thing it is to finally admit that our own speed prowess on the freeway of life just isn’t going to be enough. That we can’t “try harder” enough to win the war. In his book, The Victorious Christian Life, Pastor Tony Evans observes:
“In our humanity, we haven’t the power to overcome angels – even fallen ones like the devil and his legions. (Psalm 8 makes it clear that God created us a ‘little LOWER than the angels.’)” Then he adds: “The bottom line is this: You can’t beat the devil on your own.”
It’s difficult to make that confession, isn’t it? You may remember the story of evangelist Jim Bakker and the sad PTL crisis. Here was a man who was brilliant; he was a Christian media star; he was running a huge ministry, starting up a theme park for believers. And this was a guy who believed in succeeding by trying harder. If the contractors needed to begin work on Tower Two, he would hustle more donors on the phone. If a telethon for “Praise the Lord” fell short by two million dollars, he would redouble his efforts. If a sexual temptation came along in the form of a Jessica Hahn, well, sometimes he tried harder to resist, and sometimes he plummeted down the waterslide of sin. But that was the tactic: work harder, run faster, paddle more furiously.
And then Rev. Jim Bakker, head of PTL, went to jail for his crimes. And while there he wrote a book about his life, his hard experiences, and what he had learned about the so-called success a man can have by just “trying harder.” Do you know what he titled his book? Just three words: I Was Wrong.
What does that mean? Were his corporate decisions wrong? Yes, some of them, but that’s not the point. Did he hire some of the wrong people? No doubt about that either. But I think what this broken, repentant man is telling us is this: the idea of victory in our own efforts, by our own grit or intestinal fortitude . . . THAT is what is wrong. On his own, even the head of PTL could not beat Lucifer. We need the power of Jesus Christ, and we don’t usually accept or seek the power of Jesus until we have abandoned our own efforts.
Even Jesus, who was swelling over with power and abilities and so much raw healing divinity within Himself that just one touch made sick people well, tried to be an example to us in this matter of warring with the enemy. Over in John chapter 5, He tells His closest followers, those who had seen Him heal the sick, raise the dead, and feed thousands with one sack lunch:
“By Myself, I can do nothing.” And in the very next verse, He explains: “I seek not to please Myself, but Him who sent Me.”
The bottom line is this, friend. Our main “resisting to blood” has to be against the idea that we can beat Lucifer. The most important “speeding” we can ever do is to hasten to the throne and surrender ourselves into the powerful hands of Jesus.
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