Now, that idea of a baby croc, small enough to handle, small enough to tame, is a great illustration for what it is to have a pet sin that any of us may have. For we do have a pet sin, each of us does. And you, likely, know what your pet sin is, don't you? You know what it is as much as I know what mine is. Perhaps it's drinking. Maybe it's gossip. Maybe it's pornography, or cheating, flirting with people who aren't your spouse. Maybe it's your pride, your desire to be the best in the room no matter what. Whatever your pet sin is, though, we all have something in common with them, and that is that the sins that we have start small, and then we encourage them to get bigger.
It's like getting a puppy for your kids. Let's say you get a golden retriever for your child, your three year old girl. Now, when the puppy is a puppy, like a really little puppy, your daughter can take her for a walk. No trouble there so far. But, as the puppy and the girl both eat, sleep, and get older, one will grow faster than the other. What that means is that you could count on your daughter when she was three and the dog was a puppy to direct and guide that dog where it should go. She can control that dog. But a two year old dog and a five year old girl? Different story altogether. In that arrangement, with that leash, the girl will end up going where the dog wants to go, not the other way around. And if that girl and that dog are both tied together, then woe to her when the dog wants to run away.
Now, friends, your pet sins are just like that. Your pet sins being the things that you are for sure for sure that you can control. One more drink, one more link clicked, one more juicy gossipy story shared. One more mp3 stolen, one more drink with your married co-worker. One night spent with a girl you don't even like that much, but it beats being alone, right? One more fight with your spouse. One more comment with your girlfriends bashing your spouse. You know, our pet sins. The ones we think we can control. And like with anything else, these little sins, these pet sins, we feed them time to time. And when we feed them, they grow. And pretty soon, as we feed them, they get bigger than us. All of a sudden, that thing, that sin you thought was your pet, it pulls you around. How on earth are you going to compete with that especially when you keep on feeding it. It's a nightmare scenario, in which you feel as though you are being pulled around by your sins, almost compelled to keep on committing them, even though you hate yourself as you do them. Paul talked a lot about this, but most prominently where he said of himself that the good he wants to do is what he avoids, and the evil he wants to avoid is what he does! That's him, and that's the rest of us too. That sin that you fed for years and years and years, the thing that you were sure you could control, that you enjoyed because you were in charge and fed it bit by bit, it's a monster now, and now it's in charge.
They say that the first sign that you're addicted is when you can tell that you no longer enjoy feeding the addiction. The first sign that you're hooked is that you aren't having fun when you're doing those things anymore. If you're pulled to more and more extreme pornography, you're probably not enjoying it anymore. The thrill is gone. You're just feeding the monster. If you're an alcoholic, you don't actually enjoy drinking anymore, it's just to get you to the point of feeling normal. You know that this is the case. And if you're addicted to sin, if you're enslaved to it, if sin that you thought you could feed is in charge, then you're stuck feeding it over and over again. And that's a problem for you. And this is what Jesus meant when he said that everyone who sins is a slave to sin. He's right, you know; when you sin, it gets to be in charge, and you don't get to decide what you serve anymore. You serve your sins, and you chose your masters, shackling them to you, and ensuring that you would not and could not let go.
None of us wants to feel as though we are in servitude to anyone. None of us wants to feel as though we are in servitude to anyone or anything, we want to feel as though we have agency, and can do what we want. But you will find a master for yourself to serve, you really will. If you will not follow the edicts of Jesus Christ, you will find a master somewhere out of something. You will make it for yourself, you will choose who you serve, and you will serve that master. But nobody can serve two of them. And this is where Christ comes in.
Jesus knows our plight. He knows that we are in a situation in which we have lashed ourselves to certain sins, that we are fascinated and interested in serving masters that we think we can control, and so we do. And he knows that if he were to free us from one of those, we would instantly replace it with another one. This is who we are and what we do, every single time. So Christ, in his wisdom, decided to do something that would circumnavigate all this trouble - he lashed himself to you. If you read through the Old Testament reading from Sunday, when Jeremiah discusses his relationship with God, he refers to God as stronger than himself, as a dread warrior, which is phenomenal, fantastic, and worth remembering for any of us who are struggling with sin. For as we struggle with sin, it feels as though we have a monster that we are feeding pulling us down. We feel as though there is a millstone around our necks dragging us down. But that's not the entire story here. In the Christian faith, as opposed to all others, it's not the story of what you need to do for God, it's the story of what God has done for you. For any of you feeling dragged down, burdened, cumbered with a load of care, remember your baptism, and in your baptism, something amazing happened. You had the presence of Christ in your lives who lashed himself to you. In the same way as you chained yourself to your pet sins, Christ chained himself to you, he lashed himself to you in your baptism, and he is prepared to do the work necessary for your salvation.
It's all about who is stronger, you know. It's all about who is stronger, who is a dread warrior, who can drag whom. If you're lashed to things, one of your volition, one of God's, then you'd better hope that God is stronger than you, and you'd better hope that he can drag you to heaven. Which he does. This is exactly the work of Christ, to drag humans towards salvation if necessary, to pull them along, though they may fight, though they may kick and scream, though they desperately want to lash themselves to other thing in the way, but Christ will continue to pull us towards salvation, towards heaven. If left to your own devices, you will make destructive choices, harmful choice, because you feel as though you can be in control. And as you tie yourself to your sins, as you put a leash on them, you tend to feel as though you can and will always be in control. And as your sins get bigger, the thing you tied yourself to is now in control. It is bigger than you, stronger than you, and is pulling you, pulling you down. But Christ is stronger. He is stronger than you, he has battled and has prevailed. Your baptism is the pure and certain proof of that, where Jesus tied himself to you, and is pulling you towards the salvation he has earned for you. You're never going to find yourself getting your story straight 100%, you're never going to find yourself serving righteousness of your own free will. What you will find is that Christ will pull you, he will drag you towards what is good for you, towards salvation, towards heaven. That's the bond that counts: not the ones you make for yourself, but the ones he makes for you.
No comments:
Post a Comment