It's Complicated: I am Sick
It's Complicated • Sermon • Submitted • Presented • 39:13
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· 195 viewsWe are sick with a disease that eats away and destroys our unique construction. What white ants are to wood buildings, sin is to our lives. Sin digs down deep into our “spirit” and takes hold, and this disease corrupts every area of life. It corrupts “our thoughts, our behaviours, our desires, and our emotions”. (Haddow, Catherine. (2017). Emotions: Mirrors of the Heart. (pg. 20). Leyland, England. 10Publishing.)
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Introduction
Introduction
Humans are a unique creation. We are created with a certain quality apart from the rest of creation. We have been created after the “image of God”, with certain faculties that allow us to relate and commune with Him.
And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Every faculty of humanity works with the other to make us who we are, and plays a part in our emotional health and regulation. Having a basic understanding of how these three most basic faculties work together, and an understanding of how to care for these basic faculties will help in making sense of our emotions.
When the body is exhausted most of us would say we tend to be a bit more grumpy than usual.
Mental and emotional stress can affect the performance and well-being of the body.
There is also a certain truth to the statement “mind over matter”. Humans have been known to push and discipline themselves to accomplish incredible tasks.
Using my running as an example. Last week I shared about the connective tissue in my calves being knotted. It hurt, but with the assurance from my ostheotherpist that it was nothing serious and some recommendations with how to treat it I have continued to run, and my pace has not been to far off my usual. My “spirit” makes the decision, my “soul” falls in line emotionally, and my “body” moves and does its job.
Today we are going to focus on where the ultimate problem lies, for the reality is two of these faculties ultimately respond to the direction of one primary faculty. Though care should be given to these others, the health of this one faculty above the others will set you on the path to proper emotional health.
Remember our conclusion last week, The “spirit” is the moral centre, the “soul” the expressive centre, and the “body” the physical centre. The “body” senses, the “soul” feels, and the “spirit” decides.
To begin to understand our emotions we must understand that the confusion we struggle with is rooted in the “spirit”. The health of the “spirit” has a tremendous impact on your emotional health.
Drawing from Catherine Haddow’s words which we read at last week:
“Through the lens of Scripture, emotions are a language which force us — and others — to pay attention and respond. They provide invaluable communication about our inner selves and our true desires. And these desires are determined by the loyalties of our heart.” (Haddow, Catherine. (2017). Emotions: Mirrors of the Heart. (pg. 16). Leyland, England. 10Publishing.)
Jesus put it plainly as recorded in Matthew 6.
For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
The root problem we face is misplaced loyalties. Our loyalties are not centred on the wisdom from above that comes from the Creator, the one who designed us.
But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy.
And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace.
But upon wisdom drawn from a corrupt source, a disease stricken source.
But if ye have bitter envying and strife in your hearts, glory not, and lie not against the truth.
This wisdom descendeth not from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish.
For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work.
Today we will see that It’s Complicated, because I am sick. I am stricken with a disease that corrupts from my very core and hinders me from drawing upon the pure and peaceable wisdom that comes from my Creator the one who experiences perfect emotions.
Pray
When God created Adam and Eve the “spirit” within humanity was morally upright.
Ecclesiastes 7:29a — “Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright...”
The “spirit” within humanity was created with no moral blemish, it was innocent in thought, word, and deed. It was created without sin, but had the capacity for moral choice. There was capacity for choosing wrong, and that innocent state changing.
But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
At the time of creation Adam and Even only knew of goodness and righteousness, for everything they needed was provided for them by the good and righteous Creator God.
And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.
And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
In this state of innocence was perfect harmony, peace, joy, and communion with the Creator. It was simply pure innocence as can be seen by their unashamed nakedness.
And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.
What a place to be, but this state of innocence changed when Adam and Eve made the moral choice to step out of the will of the perfect Creator and take matters into their own hands. Look at Genesis 3.
Read Genesis 3:6-10
And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.
And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.
And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden.
And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?
And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.
From that point on humanity would no longer live in such innocence.
Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.
So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.
The original state, the innocent “spirit”, of humanity became corrupted they were no longer morally upright. They, as Solomon concluded in Ecclesiastes 7:29 which we started quoting earlier:
Ecclesiastes 7:29b — “…but they have sought out many inventions.”
And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?
Humanity is sick with a disease that eats away and destroys the unique construction. What white ants are to wood buildings, sin is to humanity. Sin digs down deep into our “spirit” and takes hold of our lives, and this disease corrupts every area of life. It corrupts “our thoughts, our behaviours, our desires, and our emotions”. (Haddow, Catherine. (2017). Emotions: Mirrors of the Heart. (pg. 20). Leyland, England. 10Publishing.)
Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience:
Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.
We are in a state of deathly decay, and if we are going to make sense of our emotions we must have an understanding of this disease and how it is destroying our lives. What we will see through this message is not pretty, and by the end most of us I know will feel quite discouraged. It will be brutally honest with the problem we face as humans.
I challenge you don’t quite on me, please stay with me, I promise it will get better even though it feels worse. Diagnosis of the problem can sometimes be the hardest thing to go through, but once the problem is full understood a proper treatment plan can be administered bringing us along to recovery.
Turn to Romans 1, under the inspiration of the Spirit of God Paul writes in the latter part of the chapter that this disease if left untreated...
Perverts my Thoughts (vs. 21-23)
Perverts my Thoughts (vs. 21-23)
Read Romans 1:21-23
Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,
And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.
Perhaps you have heard of the phrase, “I think, therefore I am.” There is some truth to that, remember one of our verses we looked at last week as we sought to understand the “spirit”:
Proverbs 23:7a — “For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he...”
The mind is like a crowded street
Where phantom thoughts, like people, meet:
Some hard at work, some idle are,
Some stay at home, some wander far.
Some thoughts wield power that ever lives-
A power that inspiration gives,
While others dwell with us awhile,
Then pass, as transient as a smile.
Thus come and go these thoughts of Ours,
Some, perfume-laden as the flowers,
While others sear our lives with blight
And bring no pleasure or delight.
Our thinking lifts us to the stars,
Or seals our hearts with prison bars;
Confers on us both joy and strife,
For as we think we fashion life.—Daniel Maurice Robins, in War Cry. (retreived on 11 Oct 2018 from: http://moreillustrations.com/Illustrations/thoughts%201.html
The phrase “vain in their imaginations” carries that idea of worthless reasoning, and points to how deep this disease, called the sin nature, really goes.
To be human means you were created with the intellectual capacity to reason, but due to this debilitating disease this reasoning is easily perverted to draw the wrong conclusions. Because the sin nature has corrupted the “spirit” we can easily come to the conclusion that darkness is light, and bitter is sweet.
Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!
Sin perverts our thoughts about God, about ourselves, and about others.
This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind,
Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart:
But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people.
The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican.
I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess.
Our thoughts deceive us by drawing conclusions that are not really there or are not true. Leaving us defeated or over confident.
I can’t see God so He must not exist.
Everything is going wrong in my life so God must not love me.
They are dressed very shabby they must be homeless or very poor.
That food dish looks hideous, so it must taste horrible.
I have been hurt by a church, so all churches must be bad.
I have completed all this training and have these degrees and those certification, therefore, I am the ultimate authority in this area.
I have served as a leader before, and been burned bad so I will never do that again.
I have never done anything like that, I am going to mess it all up.
I always mess it up, so what’s the point?
If left untreated this disease will continue to destroy my thoughts, inhibiting my reasoning ability, and I will soon find that it...
Perverts my Feelings (vs. 24a, 26a)
Perverts my Feelings (vs. 24a, 26a)
This fact can be seen in a couple of phrases of Romans 1:
Romans 1:24a — “Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts...
Romans 1:26a — “For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections...”
The term translated as “lust” is not a new word for most of us. It’s most basic meaning is simply “a strong desire of any kind”, and describes the emotions of the soul. (Vine, W. E., Unger, M. F., & White, W., Jr. (1996). Vine’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words. Nashville, TN: T. Nelson.)
It is used positively in only three passages:
And he said unto them, With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer:
For I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ; which is far better:
But we, brethren, being taken from you for a short time in presence, not in heart, endeavoured the more abundantly to see your face with great desire.
Everywhere else this word is used it carries a bad sense pointing to the evil desires that stem from this disease called the sin nature.
But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition.
For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts,
But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed.
For when they speak great swelling words of vanity, they allure through the lusts of the flesh, through much wantonness, those that were clean escaped from them who live in error.
For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.
The phrase translated as “vile affections” is translated in other versions as “dishonorable passions” or “degrading passions”. The sickness that plagues our lives degrades our quality of life so we tend to crave those things that are not in accordance with our Creator’s original design.
Because we think the wrong things about God, ourselves, and others we feel the wrong things about God, about ourselves, and about others. With our reasoning impaired it will be natural that our feelings will be impaired. Remember the logical side of our conscience is found in the “spirit” and the expressive side of our conscience is found in the “soul”. This disease has taken root deep within and grows out perverting our thoughts and spreads to the perverting of our feelings.
It is here that we are trying make sense through this series. In the original creative state humanity learned emotional health and regulation personally from the Creator, the One who expresses perfect emotion. As can be seen through the life of Jesus, who always felt the right emotion and the right degree of emotion for a particular event.
He experienced grief at the right time to the proper extent:
Jesus wept.
He experienced perfect righteous anger.
And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves,
And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.
In this state of innocence humanity only knew and understood the goodness in emotions. Yet this all changed when man became plagued by sin. Now we experience all these emotions, but they are perverted, some (sad to say) to the degraded point mentioned in Romans 1.
Due to the sin nature we tend to experience the right emotions to the wrong degree or the completely the wrong emotions for the event, but then we will experience the right emotion to the right extent.
This diagram Catherine Haddow shares from a book called, Emotions: Living Life in Colour by Graham Beynon, explains how badly our feelings have been twisted. The vertical line represents the emotion. The horizontal line represents the event. On either side of the these lines are positive and negative. We experience positive emotions and negative emotions, and positive and negative events. (cited Haddow, Catherine. (2017). Emotions: Mirrors of the Heart. (pg. 23). Leyland, England. 10Publishing.
What feeling do you have when friend looses a race?
What do you feel when a friend looses their job or a family member?
To what extent of excitement do you experience over purchasing that new car or mobile?
How do you feel about your sister giving birth to twins?
What about your feelings in regards to a friend’s new job, while you are stuck pushing the same papers around?
It is this sickness, called the sin nature, that has made my feelings so confusing, it has taken root deep within my “spirit” and is growing out taking over my “soul” like an invasive weed, and if I choose to leave this disease untreated it ultimately...
Perverts my Actions (vs. 24-32)
Perverts my Actions (vs. 24-32)
The American Journalist Sidney J. Harris wrote:
Once we assuage our conscience by calling something a “necessary evil,” it begins to look more and more necessary and less and less evil. - Sidney J. Harris
You think the wrong things, you feel the wrong things, and leading you do the wrong things.
Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves:
For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature:
And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.
And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient;
Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.
This final half of Romans 1 is perhaps one of the darkest passages of Scripture. The awful degradation of life is blatantly laid out before us, and the full effects of this debilitating disease are clearly seen.
In recent years there has been much dispute among believers regarding the interpretation and the extent of application for a few of these verses, but I am going to leave that for another time. Today I wish to keep our focus on understanding this sickness which plagues us, to which all will agree leads to a perversion of our actions. Verse 29 reads:
Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers,
The term translated “filled” has the idea, as A. T. Robertson concludes, of “a state of completion” (Robertson, A. T. (1933). Word Pictures in the New Testament. Nashville, TN: Broadman Press.). It is the end result of it all. If you choose not to treat this disease your life will play out in this fashion.
For when we were in the flesh, the motions of sins, which were by the law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death.
For ye are yet carnal: for whereas there is among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men?
Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness,
Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies,
Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.
10,000 Sermon Illustrations Consumed by Their Own Lust
Radio personality Paul Harvey tells the story of how an Eskimo kills a wolf. The account is grisly, yet it offers fresh insight into the consuming, self-destructive nature of sin.
First, the Eskimo coats his knife blade with animal blood and allows it to freeze. Then he adds another layer of blood, and another, until the blade is completely concealed by frozen blood.
Next, the hunter fixes his knife in the ground with the blade up. When a wolf follows his sensitive nose to the source of the scent and discovers the bait, he licks it, tasting the fresh frozen blood. He begins to lick faster, more and more vigorously, lapping the blade until the keen edge is bare. Feverishly now, harder and harder the wolf licks the blade in the arctic night. So great becomes his craving for blood that the wolf does not notice the razor-sharp sting of the naked blade on his own tongue, nor does he recognize the instant at which his insatiable thirst is being satisfied by his OWN warm blood. His carnivorous appetite just craves more—until the dawn finds him dead in the snow!”
Dr. George Sweeting wrote in Special Sermons For Special Days It is a fearful thing that people can be “consumed by their own lusts.” Only God’s grace keeps us from the wolf’s fate.
Chris T. Zwingelberg
Conclusion
Conclusion
This disease that runs through my veins if left untreated perverts my thoughts, inhibiting my reasoning. It perverts my feelings so they cannot be trusted. And it ultimately perverts my actions that destroy my testimony, my life, and my body physically.
All the sorrow, grief, depression, anxiety, -frenias, feelings of worthlessness, loneliness, envy, bitterness, guilt, disappointment, discontent, narcissistic tendencies, superiority complexes, outbursts of uncontrolled rage, mental instability, suicides, dictatorships, riots, political meandering and instability, and whatever else you want to include in this list of struggles and problems of society are but symptoms of the disease the is destroying humanity. The disease of the sin nature.
It attacks and corrupts even the best of us as Paul concludes:
But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.
For generations humanity has tried to cure this disease, but the disease continues to grow. All the laws, charities, government programmes and agencies are but bandages. And we are left scratching our heads, crying out with the Apostle Paul:
O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?
This message today was very dark and most of us could leave today feeling depressed, but if we are going to make sense of our emotions from the Bible we must confront the root problem head on. The road to recovery cannot begin until you admit you have a problem.
I am sick, and need healing.
And I praise God there is a means to treat this disease that is destroying my life, and put me on the path to experiencing progressive sanctification and eventual complete sanctification.
I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.
For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh:
That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.
Be sure to join us next week as we learn how you and I can be Healed.