Soul Satisfaction

The Sermon Study Guide is here.

John 3:16-21; Ephesians 5:1-17; Psalm 90:1-12

October 8/9, 2011 • Portage First UMC

I have a friend who is living with a time bomb in his head. Several months ago, he entered the hospital with some disorientation and a headache that wouldn’t go away, only to discover he had a brain tumor. No other symptoms, no idea he was as sick as he was. He was rushed that night into emergency surgery, where, as he put it, they opened his head like a can opener and removed the tumor. After the surgery, he felt better than he had in a month, but when the pathology report came back, it was sobering. Cancer. Grade 4 Gioblastoma, and while they had removed as much of it as they could, the surgeon could not get all of it. My friend felt great, but he was told he only had months to live, that he would feel great and one day, the time bomb would go off and his life here on earth would be over. Five weeks after the surgery, he wrote in his blog that what he has learned above everything else is that life is a gift, and that the biggest gift he has been given is to be able to tell his family and those close to him how much he loves them. Life is a gift. My friend is a pastor, and rather than retiring and doing nothing, he went back to work as soon as he was able, and continues to preach the Gospel because, for him, there is nothing more important than sharing the good news about Jesus. He lives life more intentionally than ever because he knows every day could be “the day.” In reality, though, he’s only living out what’s really true for all of us. None of us are promised tomorrow, and that’s why the writer of Psalm 90 made this his prayer: “Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom” (90:12). My friend has learned what it means to, as Paul wrote, make the most of every opportunity (cf. Ephesians 5:16).

As I’ve followed his story over the last few months, it’s made me think about how much time we waste doing things that don’t make a bit of difference, or even how much time we waste doing things that are not God-honoring. There are times in the evening when I sit down in front of the computer and just start surfing Facebook or other parts of the internet, and I’m clicking away and all of a sudden I wonder, “What am I doing? Why am I doing this?” There isn’t anything there I need to spend so much time reading or looking at, and often I’m not even all that interested in what I looking at. It’s almost compulsive clicking, just because it fills the time. Over the past couple of years, Americans have increased their use of the internet 43%, particularly in the use of social networking services like Facebook. On a daily basis, that means we’ve added nearly another hour in the last two years to our time online. Add to that the time we spend in front of the television, which according to 2010 data amounts to 2.7 hours per day. In contrast, the second-most common leisure activity was visiting with friends, which we allot 45 minutes per day for. Nearly three hours each day watching television; less than an hour each day interacting with other people. We waste a lot of time. Now, I’m hopeful we pushed that average up for interacting with others this past week as you got out and talked to your neighbors about Stepping Out and Stopping Hunger. It’s been great to see the grocery bags come into this evening/morning. I’m afraid, however, that this next week, we’ll just go back to the old patterns and habits. If life is a gift, as my friend has discovered, the question is what do we do with that gift? Because the more time we waste in areas of our life that are not God-honoring, the easier it is to get hooked into things that look good, that promise life but instead bring death. The psalmist asks God for the ability to number his days and gain wisdom, to see life from God’s perspective, to stay away from things that are tempting, to waste his life. His prayer ought to be ours as well.

We’re continuing our series this evening/morning on “The Me I Want To Be,” and the last two weeks we’ve taken the first steps toward becoming the person God wants us to be, the person God designed us to be from the very beginning. Two weeks ago, we took a look at what sort of “me” we are right now. Are we simply living to please others? Are there areas of our life where we’ve believed lies about who God is and what God expects? Are we flourishing or failing? And then last week, we talked about renewing our minds, putting good stuff into our minds and our lives that will steer us on the path toward honoring God, toward becoming the me God wants us to be. This week, we want to focus on redeeming our time, because the choice of how to respond to God’s call for us, God’s dream for us, is always ours. We can choose to walk God’s path, or we can choose to follow a path that looks inviting but leads away from the me God wants us to be. When I was in seminary, we lived in Wilmore, where Asbury is located, but we worshipped and worked at a church in Harrodsburg, about 30 minutes south on highway 68. If you could have driven a straight line, you probably could have gotten to Harrodsburg in about 10 minutes, but as with all roads in Kentucky, there was no straight path. Highway 68 weaved down the side of the mountain, crossed the Kentucky River, and then went back up the other side; it didn’t really straighten out until we got to Shakertown. I rather enjoyed driving that road, especially when someone would come and visit us, because I knew it well and I could make pretty good time along it. So I would drive like I always did and wait for the other person to say, “Uh, maybe you should slow down a bit?” That was always fun! Because of the way the road was built, there really weren’t a lot of options. You would drive this two-lane road without many chances to turn off until you got past the river. There was one road, just south of the river crossing, that went off to the left. And every time I passed that road, I wondered what was down there. Where would I end up if I went down that road? I never found out, because I knew for sure I wouldn’t end up in Harrodsburg if I took that road. So I stayed on the road I knew, the road that led to my desired destination. That to me is a parable of the choices we have every day. We can stay on the road that leads us to the me I want to be, or we can choose a different direction. It’s always our choice. We can waste time or we can redeem the time we have been given.

In the middle of the night, after it was well dark and most people were inside, a man comes through the shadows to visit Jesus. His name was Nicodemus. He was a Pharisee, which means he was a layperson who was concerned about holiness, about people living God’s way. Pharisees were especially concerned that people follow all of God’s laws, and generally they focused on the tiniest details. Jesus one time described them as people who put heavy burdens on others but won’t help them carry it (cf. Matthew 23:4). In fact, most of Jesus’ conflicts were with the Pharisees. He didn’t argue with what they believed, but with the way they lived it out. Nicodemus was a Pharisee. He was a also a “member of the Jewish ruling council” (3:2), which means he was one of seventy members of the Jewish supreme court. Their powers were limited by the Romans Empire in Jesus’ day, but they still retained religious authority over every Jew in the world. One of their duties was to investigate false prophets, preachers who may have gone astray (Barclay, The Gospel of John, Volume 1, pg. 123). Scholars debate, then, whether Nicodemus came to Jesus in an official capacity or whether he was just curious for himself. Why did he come at night? Perhaps because that was the time when Jewish leaders studied, or perhaps it was a time he knew he wouldn’t be seen (Keener, Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, pg. 269). Whatever the reason, he and Jesus spend the evening in theological conversation centering around what it means to be born again. In essence, Jesus says it means to start a new life by trusting in him. Jesus says, “Everyone who believes may have eternal life” in Jesus (3:15).

Then what follows, in the passage we read today, is the author’s reflection on the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus (Card, The Parable of Joy, pg. 44). In earlier Bibles, you might find these verses in red, as if they are the words of Jesus, but scholars today are pretty much agreed that these words are John’s sermon, if you will, on the meaning of what Jesus just said. And John begins with what have become some of the most well-known words in the whole New Testament: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (3:16). He goes on to remind the reader that Jesus came not to condemn the world but to save it, to bring hope and healing and restoration to this broken world. For John, the world is a simple contrast between light and darkness. Those who are “in Jesus,” those who follow him, are in the light. They can see the world clearly. They see how things were meant to be. They are closer to becoming the me they were meant to be, and they live by the truth. Those who are in darkness cannot see clearly, and their deeds are evil. “Not believing means remaining in the darkness” (Wright 34).

Now, a lot of people today don’t like that kind of language. We don’t like the word “sin” anymore, and we tend not to use it. We’ve redefined “sin” as “mistake” or “my own preference” or “psychological illness.” In the New Testament, the word for “sin” is hamartia, which literally means “missing the mark.” It’s an archery word, and it describes every time I took aim in archery at Boy Scout camp. I don’t think I ever hit the target. I would pull back on the bow with the arrow, let it fly and I would hamartia. I’d miss the mark. Now, contrary to the way we usually think of such things, Jesus never gives a list of sins. He doesn’t have a rank order of what it means to miss the mark. What he does in the Gospels is show us what happens when we sin, when we miss the mark. He shows how it affects our relationship with God, and with each other. Had he given us a list of sins, we might be free to come up with our own and claim it’s just as good a list as his. Instead, he describes what it’s like when we break a relationship with someone, when we do things that are cruel toward that other person or when we harm or devalue them in some way. The image is that God has set up this mark, the way the world works best, and for us to blatantly miss it, to disregard it even, is, in fact, to devalue God, to tell God he doesn’t matter. When we try to define our own target, we’re slapping God in the face and we hurt other people. When we reject the way God calls us to live, we might even be putting our own lives in danger. Consider it this way: suppose you come across a jug of tannish liquid in the refrigerator and on the container is a sign that says, “Don’t drink.” You have two choices at that point, right? To drink or not to drink. If you drink and the liquid turns out to be tea, you’ve still rejected what someone else has asked you to do, you’ve devalued them. If you drink and the liquid turns out to be gasoline, which for some reason is in the refrigerator, you could potentially die (cf. Everts, The Smell of Sin, pgs. 22-28). Choosing to miss the mark, choosing to reject someone else, has consequences, and in the Christian tradition, we call that sin. We waste time in our lives dallying with things we don’t need to be in the midst of, and if we’re going to redeem the time, if we’re going to move from darkness to light, we have to deal with these things long before we shoot the arrow or drink from the container. We have to deal with what’s called temptation, the desires that either lead us toward sin or could, if we firmly deal with it, lead us more toward the me I want to be.

It’s important to remember that the temptation is not the sin. Sin is when we choose to deal with temptation in a way that is not healthy for our soul, a way that breaks our relationship with God or with someone else. So when faced with temptation, the first thing we need to remember is that isolation makes it more powerful. Isolation makes temptation harder to resist. Paul reminds us, “No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it” (1 Corinthians 10:13). God is always with us, but we also need to stay connected to a community, to folks who love us and will help us stay on God’s path. One of the many things I love about the film Courageous is its focus on a group of guys who challenge each other and help each other in the midst of a difficult time. We need others. We don’t just say you can’t live this faith on your own in order to boost church attendance. We were made for community, especially when temptation comes along. Twelve-step groups like Alcoholics Anonymous know this better than the church does, because one of their practices is that you can call your sponsor any time, day or night, when the temptation to drink comes. We cannot live in isolation.

Once we have a community, when temptation comes, we need to ask a simple question: where will this lead? If I choose to go down this road, will it lead me to become more the me I want to be or less? Like I was talking about a few moments ago, will the road you’re on get you to where you want to go? That’s why we began two weeks ago by first talking about what sort of person, what sort of me, we want to be. As the saying goes, if you don’t know where you’re going, any road will do. But if we know where we’re going, in any area of life but especially in our spiritual life, then when a temptation comes along, we can ask where it will lead and know whether or not that choice will lead us toward God or away from God. If it will lead us toward God, then it’s worth the time it takes to invest in it. If it will lead us away from God, we’re not numbering our days well.

Sometimes the choice is difficult and much more subtle than we imagine it to be. A little over a week ago, there was a group of us who went to Leadership Institute at Church of the Resurrection, and Pastor Adam Hamilton shared about a time in his life where things were very crazy. His youngest daughter was getting ready to move away for school, halfway across the country, and he wanted to spend time with her, but he also had many obligations in ministry. He felt like he couldn’t say no to any of them, so he was keeping an incredibly busy schedule, running here and there and trying to keep everyone happy, to do what he thought God had called him to do. The last project he was involved in was a trip to the Holy Land to film videos for an Advent series, one we’re going to use this year, and after finishing that project, he got on a plane to come back to the United States, and he started feeling sick. He had a fever, was shaking, and even had to run to the restroom to throw up. On his way back to his seat, he passed out in the aisle, and when he came to, they got him back to his seat and covered him up. And he said he sat there in that seat praying, and he heard God speaking to him very clearly. God said, “Adam, you’re an idiot. You’re doing all these things while your daughter just needs to have her dad.” Sometimes even things that look like they’re good things can be a temptation to walk away from the me I want to be. Where will this lead? It’s a critical question.

So surround yourself with a community and ask yourself where this temptation might lead. Then monitor your soul satisfaction. John Ortberg says, “We become vulnerable to temptation when we are dissatisfied with our lives. The deeper our dissatisfaction, the deeper our vulnerability, because we were made for soul satisfaction. We cannot live without it. If we do not find soul satisfaction in God, we will look for it somewhere else, because we will look for it” (The Me I Want To Be, pg. 141). And our world wants us to be dissatisfied. Many of you know I’m a gadgetaholic, and every couple of months or so, the world tells me I should spend my money on the latest and greatest. Apple announced a new iPhone and immediately the temptation to upgrade enters my life. I have to pray about my own satisfaction level, because if I spend all my money on things like that, I have less to give to God’s work, and besides that, I’ll just be dissatisfied in another couple of months. It may not be gadgets for you, but the world sends all sorts of messages about satisfaction. Tired of your old marriage? Get a new one. Tired of your old job? Quit. Tired of your old house? Buy a new and bigger one; it doesn’t matter if you can afford it or not. Get it now, pay later—and yet every time we try to satisfy our soul with anything other than God, we end up empty after a very short time. St. Augustine said our souls are restless until they find their rest in Christ.

Nicodemus was, I think, a man with a restlessness in his soul, a longing for something more than just keeping the rules. I think that’s why he came to Jesus, because he sensed in him something more, something different, a closer connection to the God Nicodemus longed to serve with everything that he was. And I think that because, at the end of the Gospel, Nicodemus is one who helps bury Jesus (19:39). By that point, he’s become a follower of this teacher who showed the way to God. And I wonder if, when he saw Jesus crucified, he remembered this conversation on a dark Jerusalem night? Jesus told him, “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him” (3:14-15). Now, that’s a strange thing to say, but Nicodemus would have caught the reference to Numbers 21, where the camp of the Israelites is overrun with poisonous snakes, and God instructs Moses to make a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. If you were bitten, all you had to do was look at the snake on the pole and you would be healed (Wright, John for Everyone, Part One, pg. 32). Jesus uses that same image of himself. When he is lifted up, when he is on the cross, that’s when healing from our sin, from our brokenness, from our temptations is available. John says all we have to do is believe, look at Jesus. He alone is our healer. He alone is the one who can satisfy our soul.

One young man found that out. He had been looking for a solution to his restlessness for some time, and when he went to church, he generally agreed with what the preacher said, but he found nothing in the worship to truly change his life. One day, he was headed to an appointment when a snowstorm stopped him and made him turn into a small Methodist church. The storm had kept most of the regular parishioners away, including the preacher, so a layperson stood up to give the morning message to a rather meager audience. He read the text for the day, Isaiah 45:22, which said, “Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else.” The speaker bumbled through the message, rambled, and finally turned toward the young man and simply said, “Young man, you look very miserable. Young man, look to Jesus Christ!” That simple message broke through to the heart of Charles Spurgeon, who did “look to Jesus” that day and went on to become one of the most powerful preachers of the 19th century, preaching over 1900 sermons and leading untold numbers of people toward looking to Jesus. Soul satisfaction can only be found by looking toward the one on the cross, the one who gave his life for us. In Jesus is found salvation and hope. In Jesus is found the way to redeeming our time because fixing our eyes on him gives our life focus and meaning and strength against temptation.

Then, one final word: when you fall, don’t stay down. We have this idea in American Christianity that once someone gives in to some sort of temptation, they are done. They are beyond forgiveness. They are beyond redemption. If that is true, then Jesus only came to forgive some of our sins. The belief that what we have done is so bad that we’re now beyond hope usually comes from other people, from modern-day Pharisees, and from the father of lies himself, the devil (cf. John 8:44). The Spirit of God works in just the opposite way (Ortberg 142), and even when we fall, he moves us toward forgiveness, toward redemption and healing, even when others try to hold us back. His name is redeemer, and there is nothing we can do he can’t redeem. There is no place we can go where we can’t come back. Temptation does not have to be the last word, so when you fall, get back up and allow the Spirit of God to resume his work of making you the me you want to be.

You know, we all should live like my friend who knows he is dying, because we’re all terminal. We really have no time, no matter how long our lives are, to waste on unimportant things. I want to live knowing every day is a gift, and I don’t want to waste time on whatever distracts me from the mission God has given me. I like the way my friend summed it up in his blog: “I’m planning to live a bit longer in this body, but someday it will fail me. I’m OK with that. I am not defined by my body. I am a child of God, made in His image, a spirit, and my journey is ultimately going to end up in His presence where ultimate healing occurs! I’m in no hurry to get there, but I have a hope that will last forever! So either way, I win!” As we continue to become the me we want to be, let’s do everything we can to redeem the time. There is evil all around us, but even closer to us than that is the Spirit of God who will enable to face and overcome every temptation as we move toward true soul satisfaction. Let’s pray.

O Lord, teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom. Help us make the most of every opportunity because the days are evil.