Well, are you ready today for the fourth step, the step that’s all the way down at the floor level?
Those who were not here last Sunday do not know what I’m talking about. Those who were here will need a little review. Let me explain.
Last Sunday we walked the first mile on the Roman Road ... the one that says, "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." I worked hard on the word "fall". I said that it was very easy to fall, very easy to trip over obstacles. In fact, I said that the farther we fall, the bigger the obstacle, the more difficult it is to pick ourselves back up.
I used these steps to illustrate the increasing depth of our obstacles and the deepening power of sin.
The first step represented what? Sins; sins, plural; specific acts we commit, knowing that they are wrong. Paul told us in Romans that "there is no one who is righteous, not even one." That is, all of us do wrong things. It is certain we are going to commit sins.
But then I went off the platform to the second step. What is the second step? Sin; sin, not just sins. Sin, not actions, but an attitude, a stance. There is something in us that hardens into a way of being, and that is sin. Paul said it for us, "There is no one who has understanding,” meaning that we do not really see ourselves for what we are. And so sin is harder to get rid of than sins are.
Finally, however, I took the plunge, almost literally, from the higher plane up here down to the third step. That third step, that level beneath sins as actions and even beneath sin as a life-stance; what is that? Evil. Evil; the powers that take us over; the forces that worm their way into us and take us into a realm we never dreamed we could get into. The powers of evil; that something, call it Satan if you like, that begins to use us, ride us, take control of us. Paul’s phrase is, "There is no one who seeks God." There is no one who is close enough to God and God’s goodness to escape the grip of evil.
And you will remember that once I got onto that third step, rescuing myself became impossible. I had to have help. I may be able to correct sins on my own, although I will keep on doing them. And I may be able, with the insights of others, to work on sin, the attitude, to some extent. But once I am in the grasp of evil, once I am in the control of something that is taking me over, I cannot get out. I cannot overcome that obstacle. Only Christ, who enters our space and time; only Christ, who committed no sins, who was without sin, and who defeated evil at the cross, can help me. Only Christ will do.
So at the close of last week’s service I promised that today we would look at another reality, the fourth step. There is a level more evil than evil itself. There is a consequence of having tripped on sins, sin, and evil. The fourth step ... what do you think it is? Any guesses?
The Bible’s awesome words are death and hell. Death and hell. What does that mean? The little lady in the TV ad selling medical paging devices says, "I’ve fallen and I can’t get up." "I’ve fallen and I can’t get up." When we dwell with sin long enough, the situation gets very nearly hopeless. "I’ve fallen and I can’t get up." Death, hell.
That sounds pretty final. But hear the rest of the verse. We will have to look at two issues. The issue of self-understanding and the issue of self-control. Self-understanding and self-control. Remember our theme, "I’ve fallen and I can’t get up."
In Romans 7, Paul puts into a few clear statements what the problem is with self-understanding and self-control. Romans 7:15-25
I
One of the ways we use to make our lives work is to achieve self-understanding. We think that if only we could gain insight into ourselves, we could live successfully. We like to think that if only we could probe our motives and peer into the inner recesses of our hearts, we could do whatever we need to do and be whatever we want to be. We read self-help books, we consult counselors, we just think about ourselves endlessly, in order to understand ourselves. As the poet Robert Burns put it in his quaint Scottish dialect, “O wad some power the giftie gie us to see ourselves as ithers see us." We want self-understanding.
But hear the apostle Paul in his radical honesty; looking deep within, Paul says, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” Can you identify with that? “I do not understand my own actions. I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.”
Don’t you find that self-understanding is an elusive thing? The trouble is that sin steps in and clouds our perspective. Sin winds its tentacles around our hearts and makes knowing who we are very difficult. Every attempt to face ourselves gets turned around and becomes a problem for us. Either we never really see ourselves for what we are; or, if we do, we hang up on that insight. Sin will take even our best insights and turn them into an occasion of death.
When I enrolled in seminary, they gave all of us a psychological test called MMPI, the Minnesota Multiphasic Inventory. I’m sure many of you have heard of that or have been subjected to it. It was pretty obvious what the seminary was trying to find out, because the test was loaded up with questions something like, “True or False: I feel that I and only I can save the world!" Clearly they were trying to weed out people who thought they were somehow the next thing to the Messiah.
Well, I had a mole in the seminary administration. You know what a mole is? A mole is somebody on the inside who will leak information to you, unofficially. My mole had access to the MMPI test scores, and came by one day to tell me that I had racked up the best "personal security" score of any student the seminary had ever enrolled; that is, that the tests indicated that I was burdened with almost no anxiety and no insecurity.
Now that’s a nice little piece of self-understanding to have, isn’t it? That should give a fellow a boost, shouldn’t it? No insecurity! All right! Except, do you know what happened with me? Do you know what sin did with that information? The very knowledge that I had no insecurity began to create in me insecurity. The more I focused on the idea that I really did know that I was called of the Lord to do ministry, the more I felt that I had to push myself harder and harder to do ministry right! Just because I was so sure I was doing the right thing, I felt all the more compulsion to do it properly. I had to live up to what they told me I was. Self-understanding had become a problem!
So standing up to preach became a matter of trying to get every word, every syllable memorized, just exactly right, so that the message would go as planned. Sitting down with a group to do Bible study became a matter of getting every fact, every detail, plotted out, written down, so that I couldn’t be thrown off course by any question. I was so aware that I was secure that I was becoming insecure.
You see, Paul has it right; "I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate." "I’ve fallen and I can’t get up."
Well, it keeps on going. Once I became aware that the knowledge that I was psychologically secure had made me feel insecure, then, when I began to try to use that insight to correct that problem, I got scared about whether there were other things I was not doing well. Was I a good husband? Was I a good father? Was I a decent home handyman and an acceptable driveway auto mechanic? On and on! Do you see? Everything! When my self-understanding told me I was a competent, capable person, then I had to drive myself to live up to what I thought I saw.
But you already know that I could never do it all, never. For “I do not understand my own actions. I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate." “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up."
Friends, the wages of sin is death. Death. All this preoccupation with self leads to death. Death in our relationships, step one … sins, wrong acts against other people, because we arrogantly disregard them; this focus on self creates sin, death in our selves, step two … because we feel frustrated and disappointed with ourselves; and all this attention to self, all this being turned in, brings us to evil, step three. It makes for death in our relationship with God, because we have put ourselves at the center and not God.
When we linger with dead relationships with others, with a dead self, and with a dead relationship with God, then, "The wages of sin is death". Call it hell. Hell is death in every significant encounter. The fourth step. "I’ve fallen and I can’t get up."
II
But there is not only the problem of self-knowledge. There is also the problem of self-control. Self-control. We believe, don’t we, that our lives could be successful if only we would just go ahead and do what we know we ought to do? We preach ourselves little sermons: don’t be ruled by your emotions, be ruled by your head. Don’t let yourself go; get a grip on things. Control yourself, we say.
But I wonder. I wonder if that’s possible. When I was in grade school, they gave out conduct grades along with the academic grades. You got either an S for satisfactory or a U for Unsatisfactory in various things like promptness and neatness and politeness and so forth. Well, I did okay on the academic side of my report card, the readin’, ritin’, and rithmetic side; but what jabs of agony went through my ten-year-old soul, as with astonishing frequency, and with the biggest, boldest letter U ever made, my teachers downgraded me on the line that read, "Shows reasonable degree of self-control" Ouch! Self-control! Worse, as I remember it, all my strenuous efforts to please my teachers and bring home an unsullied report card went for naught. I never even figured out what I was doing wrong! I couldn’t see it. I suppose it’s obvious to you that I never did get hold of that one: "shows reasonable degree of self-control."
But, if so, I think I’m in good company. Paul seems to have had a problem with this too. He says, "I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me." Sin that dwells in me. In other words, "I’ve fallen and I can’t get up."
Paul is saying that just when we think we’ve got it all together, we are not in control of ourselves. Sin is in control. Sin is on the throne. Self is on the throne. And the mere fact that we have good intentions does not conquer that strange something that creeps across our lives and keeps us from doing what we have said we want to do.
Old Benjamin Franklin, according to his autobiography, set out once upon a time to collect all the virtues. He says that he decided he would work on acquiring good habits and fine qualities, one at a time. He made a list of some thirteen qualities he wanted to acquire, and set out to get them. Today he would work on modesty; tomorrow he would work on honesty; the next day on charity. And so on.
But Franklin tells us that, to his disappointment, while he was working on today’s virtue, the one he thought he had mastered yesterday went wrong. And the one he had acquired the day before that escaped him. Whatever goodness he got, he could not hold on to. So Benjamin Franklin concluded, at the end of his experiment, that we could not become better people just by deciding to become better people! We are not in control of ourselves. Self-control is not enough.
For Paul says that at some point it is no longer we who have charge of our lives. It is sin. Sin has graduated from wrong actions and has become a pervasive attitude. And then sin has moved from being a pervasive attitude to being a force that is beyond human grasp and control. It has taken on a life of its own. It has us. It holds us. And it sucks the very life out of us. Inevitably, inexorably, down, down, down; to death.
Death because I am so busy trying to get control that I control and manipulate others; so my relationships die. Death because my efforts at getting myself under control squeeze the joy out of everything; so my self dies. And death because my desire to be in control of my life means that God is not allowed to be in control, and so my relationship with Him dies.
That’s what hell is. Don’t be preoccupied with fire and brimstone. As one theologian said, "Don’t worry about the furniture of heaven or the temperature of hell." Hell is separation: separation from humanity, separation from ourselves, and ultimately separation from God.
Sins, sin, evil, and thus death, hell. What is our scripture? “The wages of sin is death.” “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.
Who cannot now echo Paul’s anguished cry, “Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” Do you feel that too?
III
Hear the good news: “The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ ... there is … now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.” “The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
I take you to the cross this morning, to the cross where hung one who knew exactly who He was and who understood Himself completely. Christ Jesus had self-understanding. He said, "No one takes my life from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again.” "I lay down my life down of my own accord". He has mastered self-understanding, and if we are in relationship to him and his cross we begin to understand who we are.
“The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
I take you not only to the cross, but also to the empty tomb, to the empty tomb where, though his life was snatched away for a moment, Christ was in control. In control of Himself and in control of the powers of life and death. "I have power to lay my life down, and I have power to take it up again.” Christ has mastered self-control, and to him we can give ourselves, so that he may be on the throne of our lives.
“The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord."
And I take you not only to the cross and not only to the empty tomb. But, awesome as it is, I take you to the very gates of hell itself. The Scripture says that our Christ descended into hell. He knows what it was to bear the scorn of others; "he was despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief." He knows what it is to have a tortured soul; "Now is my soul troubled; Father, save me from this hour." He even knows what it is to be forsaken of the Father; “My God, why have you forsaken me?" Hell. And He will go even there for us.
But now He is victory. Now He waits to gather us up, to forgive us and to bless us. Now He waits to understand us as we have never before been understood; now He waits to guide us as we have never before been guided. For now He is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Now there is therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. No condemnation, no estrangement, no frustration, and no death.
"The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
"I’ve fallen and I can’t get up" on my own. But "thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord," "from sinking sand He lifted me, with tender hand He lifted me.”
