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On the Eve of Forever
Presenter: Larry Kirkpatrick
Location: Mentone Seventh-day Adventist Church, California, USA
Delivery: 2006-04-16 01:28Z
Publication: LastGenerationTheology.org 2006-04-16 01:28Z
Type: Sermon
URL: http://www.lastgenerationtheology.org/lgt/doc/7gre/kir-oteof.php
When Israel went out of Egypt, the house of Jacob from a people of strange language; Judah was His sanctuary, and Israel His dominion. The sea saw it, and fled: Jordan was driven back. The mountains skipped like rams, and the little hills like lambs. What ailed thee, O thou sea, that thou fleddest? thou Jordan, that thou wast driven back? Ye mountains, that ye skipped like rams; and ye little hills, like lambs? Tremble, thou earth, at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob; Which turned the rock into a standing water, the flint into a fountain of waters (Psalm 114).
Today we stand in continuity with God’s people of old. This has its points, both positive and negative. Their background was four centuries of slavery and heathenism; ours, four centuries of Protestantism and Christianity. You would think that we would be way ahead. They spent forty years looping in the wilderness. But 160 downstream we are still here. One of their most difficult areas was what we would call worldliness; a fascination with temporary things, passing things, secular things; with business as usual. God would educate, guide, gently but definitely correct them. But it would only work if they were willing to humble themselves.
God delivered His people. From out of the iron furnace of slavery, He would take them to Canaan. From out of heathenism and darkness, insect worship and superstition, He sought completely to change their experience.
When Egypt was ruined, an eager band left headed eastward. But we know the story of the Exodus; all was not peaches and cream. Time and again, the people were prone to complain, rebel, and suggest a return to the iron furnace. God had not delivered them for a general freedom; they had been freed to serve. He knew that His ways would ennoble them, restore their self-respect, reinvigorate their sense of having been made in God’s image. They could embrace that design, or reject it.
Today we face the same dilemma. We can choose to serve God and thus, to let Him take us up to higher things, higher purposes, more penetrating vision. Or, we can choose to serve ourselves. We can choose the familiarity of vice, the flavors and feelings, the self-perception that we prefer. But that means we will at last, at best, only be advanced practitioners of self-servitude.
On the other hand, we may choose the narrower way, the route with more climbing, the route with strange new food, the path which must inevitably call us to rip from our mind bit after bit of foolishness. The life of sin with which we are so familiar must be surrendered or we will never, never, never, never be like Jesus.
Blessings of God’s Word
Consider now the first eight verses of Psalm 119:
Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the LORD. Blessed are they that keep His testimonies, and that seek Him with the whole heart. They also do no iniquity: they walk in His ways. Thou hast commanded us to keep Thy precepts diligently. O that my ways were directed to keep Thy statutes! Then shall I not be ashamed, when I have respect unto all Thy commandments. I will praise Thee with uprightness of heart, when I shall have learned Thy righteous judgments. I will keep Thy statutes: O forsake me not utterly.
We think of blessing as discreet events; blessing in a child born, a narrowly missed automobile collision, an unexpected tax refund. But Scripture says that our day to day lives can be lived under blessing. “Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the LORD.” Notice here the twofold point: (1) activity, and (2) morality. They are doing something and what they are doing is constrained by God’s law. The second sentence restates the same; the blessed keep His testimonies and seek Him with the whole heart. Because they seek Him, they fill their mind with His testimonies. Because they seek Him, they are actively infilling.
Now here we stand on the eve of forever. We all know by now that we are sponges. So easily do we soak up nearby moisture that we need to be careful what kind of moisture we are taking up. Eyes and ears are the main inlets. Our character is made up of our thoughts and feelings combined. What are our thoughts and feelings made up of? What we see, what we hear, what we think on.
Did you notice the Psalm’s next line? “They also do no iniquity: they walk in His ways.” This is big. If you walk in God’s ways, you can walk without sinning. Notice that they do “no” iniquity. Not less sin, but no sin.
When will I praise God with uprightness of heart? After I have learned His ways. Then what purpose this life? To learn His ways, to cooperate with His initiative to retrain us. We are inclined to evil; more, we have trained ourselves to it. But as Christians seriously seeking the Savior, we look to His example and aim that it will be reproduced in us.
On Shortcuts
Many Christians rejoice in their imagination that through Christ God has built a bypass, a shortcut to heaven, that character development will not be required of them. Think again. The only way to the Father is through Christ (John 10). But even through Christ the way is close, challenging, in contrast to our taste and inclination. Living with different natures in the New Jerusalem and the New Earth will be very different. The message of Christianity is a message of change, not a magic carpet ride. The Bible teaches not that the Christian get a shortcut, but that Heaven has marked out a pathway for him to follow in company with Christ. Salvation means a battle and a march, a journey.
Do you remember the last time you threw your stuff out? I remember mine. Three video tapes, eight DVDs. Pretty mild stuff most of it. But sometimes I would come to the end of the day and just feel exhausted. We feel exhausted but we don’t want to sleep yet. So we pick the easiest thing, often putting ourselves in front of a television or computer screen and drinking in the moral instruction of Hollywood.
I am convinced that we neither rest as appropriate for those who are training for heaven, nor are proactive enough in choosing our moral input. Even sitting in front of a Christian television or radio broadcast, or listening to a sermon are not aggressive enough solutions. We need to aggressively make time to put Bible into our heads and hearts. We must move so that our eyes and ears are on a daily basis conduits for God’s truth to our brains.
The next eight verses of Psalm 119:
Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? by taking heed thereto according to Thy word. With my whole heart have I sought Thee: O let me not wander from Thy commandments. Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against Thee. Blessed art Thou, O LORD: teach me Thy statutes. With my lips have I declared all the judgments of Thy mouth. I have rejoiced in the way of Thy testimonies, as much as in all riches. I will meditate in Thy precepts, and have respect unto Thy ways. I will delight myself in Thy statutes: I will not forget Thy word.
The Psalmist recognizes what we were just talking about: cleansing one’s way. The Christian life is a process of cleansing one’s way. The Bible asks how do you do it? The answer? By living one’s life in harmony with God’s Word. By whole-hearted seeking for God’s ways. We are prone to wander. But if we are proactive, if we plead with God for His help to guide us so that we do not wander, if we seek to live in harmony with His ways, we can be successful.
Hiding God’s Word in My Heart
Let us consider what has ever been one of the most popular Bible verses: Psalm 119:11:
Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against Thee.
Let us here pause to consider six points in connection with this verse.
Thy Word
First, the Word that causes us not to sin is God’s Word. It is not our word. It is God’s word. It has a source above us, outside of us. Its source is the same source that designed us. It comes from beyond. It is generated neither by ecclesiastical counsels or meetings of theologians. It is not in uninspired books written by well-meaning people or even pastors. It is God’s Word. Our hearts must have God’s word in them if we are going to stop sinning.
I can pour rice milk on my shredded wheat at breakfast and fuel my body, but I can’t pour that same rice milk in my lawn-mower and expect it to run. It has to have its energy in a different format, in a different kind of fuel. It will not run if I pour rice milk into the tank. Likewise, if we want our faculties to function successfully in the battle with self and sin, we will have to put the right fuel in. The right fuel is God’s Word.
So we know the only fuel that will work is God’s Word. But how do you get it from God? He is the only source. We assume that we have God’s Word. Do we have it? You carry your Bible. You read two chapters in the morning maybe? You pray, morning noon and evening? Fine. Still my question is, do you have God’s Word?
You have ideas; you have verses; you have (hopefully) the latest teaching from the pulpit ringing in your ears, from Sabbath and from prayer meeting. But is it a scattered line here and a scattered line there? Do you have the larger picture from God’s Word? I am not talking about the ability to ace Bible games or to remember a list of verses. What I mean is not the individual cement blocks, but the whole structure. Do you have in yourself the basic tenor of God’s Genesis to Revelation message?
You should have the forest and the trees, you should understand not only a few isolated texts but something of the larger picture. Until you have invested time aggressively drinking in His Word, you’ll have only your own word with a few choice ideas from God thrown in. If your goal is to stop sinning, you will have to get more serious and in a steady way shape your life, no matter the cost, no matter what it takes, to saturate it with God’s Word.
Have I Hid
Secondly, notice that the Psalmist, once he began to have God’s Word, did what? He hid it. Kids like a house, a yard, big enough for them to hide in. There have to be hiding places, and that means there has to be significant space. One who hides God’s Word in his heart is placing it deeply. Not only that, but he is placing it in such a way that it is protected. Hidden things are better protected.
Everyone has their hiding places. But not everyone is hiding God’s Word very well. We need to hide this Word deeply. And we hide the things we value the most. Things that we are indifferent to, we are much more apt to leave exposed. The Psalmist deeply values God’s Word and treats it according to this valuation.
In My Heart
Thirdly, where is it stored? In one’s heart. The heart signifies the innermost portion of one’s being; the core. Your heart really is located in the brain inside your cranium . That tiny mass of probably less than three pounds houses your personality, your memory, and all the emotional wiring that makes you you. Your brain is wired to those key sensory receptors we mentioned before, particularly your ears and eyes.
Do you store your best food in your toilet tank? No. You keep your kitchen clean. There are laws so that a bathroom cannot open off of a kitchen. And yet, we will store our most precious things side by side with garbage in our brain. Now it is true, we don’t have the option of storing memories of junky things on our left hip and things of spiritual excellence in our head. But that is because God never planned for us to store spiritual junkfood in ourselves. He intended that we would fill our lives with the best things, the things that are there because we are made in His image.
Notice also whose heart it is. “My heart.” I have responsibility for what goes there. I have ownership of that space. Everyone is born with a pocket. But everyone decides what to put in that pocket. Who chooses what gets the closest to your innermost self? You do. You choose what you become. And mothers and fathers have a lot to say also about the initial stages of a child’s character formation. If your parents have labored to develop your character, be very, very thankful. You might have a “tougher” childhood, but as an adult you will be ready to contribute someething helpful to the world.
That I Might Not
The verse has another important thought in it: so “that I might not.” This is not postmodernism. The Psalmist has a definite view. He accepts the premise that there is a higher purpose, a definite morality, a good and an evil. He believes that he lives in a moral place. He recognizes that the theory of an amoral universe is a fiction.
Recognizing that we do live in a moral setting, that we are held morally responsible, that to sin is to damage not only oneself but one’s world, we keep in mind God’s purpose, His goal for us. And that is resistance. We will resist evil. We will refuse doing homage to our damaged nature. All the seeking for God and understanding of His Word, all the expenditure of time and energy to understand and live by it, all the labor to hide it deeply inside of us, is accomplished with one overriding concern in mind. So “that I might not.” At all costs, one thing is to be avoided…
Sin
Sin. We are at war with sin. It is a matter of our eternal life or death. We are at war with the seed of rebellion that is in us. In the fallen estate, each man, each woman is born to struggle, to fight. He is born onto the battlefield. The tempting tree is no more outside him, but has moved to a central place in his being.
Worse, all have tasted its fruit, and in the short term indulged. Has it made us like God, knowing good and evil? Keep in mind that God not only knows the difference between good and evil but He rejects the evil, He insists on the good. Our response, our choice must make us in the end, deep advocates of righteousness or rebellion. The Christian imperative is, “that I might not sin.”
God’s plan was to educate Adam and Eve in such a way that they would learn to trust in Him, learn what they needed to know about sin, and be innoculated against it without experiencing its evil. But they chose the pathway of catastrophy instead. So all their children for six millennia have had a closer battle.
Sin crouches at the doorway ready to pounce, poised, desiring to strike (Genesis 4:7). It is stealthful, it is deadly; it is not part of God’s plan for eternity. Sin is a sign of immaturity, of a creation still being proved. In a universe where all are granted free will, sin was a possibility but not an inevitability. God was ready for either outcome. Indeed, He saw this outcome and counted the cost before proceding. But then He did proceed. When Lucifer did begin to incline the wrong way, God was ready. He appealed to him with the best arguments that divinity could devise.
When Satan committed himself to war against God, the contest became inevitable. An ultimate outcome had to be achieved. Sin and its innate hungry selfishness must be chosen, or righteousness and unselfishness. In one universe, the two could not co-mingle or co-exist indefinitely. We must choose whom we will serve.
Against Thee
Sixth, the Psalmist is determined to place himself on God’s side, in support of God’s government. He refuses to sin “against Thee.” Nothing can induce him to so heinous an act as sin. Urgently he seeks for a changed mind. He is not content to remain the same as before. His spirit is altogether different from that of Satan. He is determined to live it out; he is determined to be an advertisement for righteousness. Every time Satan sees a true Christian, he sees us as one of those red circles with the diagonal line drawn through it. We are living representatives of opposition to his mastery.
Each nation’s embassy is considered to be the sovereign territory of that nation. As God’s ambassadors, we are His sovereign territory, His dominion in Satan’s revolted world. Two governments are vying for our loyalty. We choose to which government our mind will adhere, our heart cleave, for eternity.
In the 17th century John Milton put Lucifer’s thought into poet’s words. Milton portrays the devil irremediably committed to evil, surveying the scene of the underworld’s hellish gloom. He insists that it is more important to be a selfish, independent ruler of oneself than to be good. Hear these thoughts as Milton imagined them:
Farewel happy Fields
Where Joy for ever dwells: Hail horrours, hail
Infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell
Receive thy new Possessor: One who brings
A mind not to be chang’d by Place or Time.
The mind is its own place, and in it self
Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.
What matter where, if I be still the same,
And what I should be, all but less then he
Whom Thunder hath made greater? Here at least
We shall be free; th’ Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure, and in my choyce
To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav’n (John Milton, Paradise Lost, book 1, lines 249-263).
Hell, of course, is not a place as Milton envisioned. Nor does his Lucifer have matters right. Apart from God we are cold; we have no goodness. Lucifer imagines that he can make do in the awful new environment of his prison, but he is fooling himself. Infamously he spouts his line: “Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav’n,” but notice his more honest recognition that happiness and joy for him will be no more: “Farewel happy Fields Where Joy for ever dwells: Hail horrours, hail Infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell.”
Satan refused to change his mind. Thus he was not free. He made himself a slave. Better to reign in hell? No one reigns in hell, even were it a place. To be in bondage to self is to finally erase one’s capacity for goodness and righteousness and reduce oneself to only an object. Satan today can no more appreciate righteousness than can a rock in the driveway.
If we hear the world and allow it to ring incessantly through our head, we will be deadened. The strange noises of its rebellion will fill us, and we will be only able to multiply sin and evil and pollute what originally was very good (Genesis 1:31). Shall we feast our mind on the slime of Hollywood, the poison of rebel hearts like our own? Or shall we see the example of Jesus and turn and renounce all that opposes Him?
The Example of Jesus
On the eve of forever, we must take stock. We must be wary of the mental diet of destruction we have been indulging and find the nearest disposal chute. Jesus is our pattern. Jesus saw it was better to serve on earth, to descend to where fallen man needed rescue, to bring the ladder right down to the dust and the mud itself, than to reign in heaven. While this one lost sheep of a world was mired in emergency, perched at the edge of hopelessness, Jesus came down to walk this sod with us.
How contrary to the spirit that animates Satan. How important to we who would seek for life. Jesus, our Substitute, is also our Example. In Philippians 2:5 heaven shows the way home. “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.”
How will we experience this? How will we have the mind of Christ? Not by tuning in to the sordid productions we are so used too, where violence and sexual immorality are the behavioral baseline.
When we began our journey this hour we heard from Psalm 114. “When Israel went out of Egypt, the house of Jacob from a people of strange language; Judah was His sanctuary, and Israel His dominion.” What two ideas run through that Psalm? Deliverance and presence; God delivers His people from Egypt, and His presence goes out with them. Deliverance and presence. If you and I would be delivered, we must follow God out as He delivers us. We must go with Him, experience His deliverance and His presence. Notice, then “Judah was His sanctuary, and Israel His dominion.” What are we?
Are you God’s sanctuary? His dominion? Does He rule here?
We refuse to eat unhealthful foods because our body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. But then do we turn around and fill our heart with sounds and pictures that promote immoral thoughts? Can Satan point to you and say, “Behold the Christian, refusing to drink liquor but making his mind a place for me!”
What are we putting into our heads? What are we becoming? Egypt has long tentacles. Join me, here, now, on the eve of forever, in cutting them off. Before the sun goes down on this Sabbath day, won’t you consider a change of course, a pulling of the plug? Won’t you sit down in a chair, recognize your frailty and inclination to evil, and consider where you can make changes in your viewing habits, your listening habits, changes in the mental food granted entry into your mind?
God offers to make you His sanctuary, His dominion. Saying “Yes” means action more than words. Desire to have the mind of Christ does not guarantee a mind like Christ. Over the long haul it is your Holy Spirit empowered choice to restrict your mental diet that will show whom you have chosen. Be a man for Christ. Cut off the tentacles. Be a woman for Christ. Cut off the tentacles. You live on the eve of forever. Show your faith by your works. Your brain will thank you for it later. LGT
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