Christian Ethics in a World of Confusion-Session 3

Turn with me to Hebrews chapter two.

Hebrews 2:14–18 ESV

14 Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, 15 and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. 16 For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham. 17 Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. 18 For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.

I want you to listen to a conversation between a pastor and one of his church members. The pastor asked, "What's wrong?" The church member said, "Well, I'm going to hell." Pastor said, "Okay, well, why do you think that you're going to hell?"

The pastor started talking to him about his faith. He knew this young man. And about how he had been following Christ and his receiving of the gospel. The pastor said, "Why are you worried that you're going to hell?" He said, "Do you trust Christ? Do you believe the gospel?" The church member said he did. The pastor asked said, "Well, what's going on?" The member said, "Well, I trust Christ." But what you need to understand is, I am this close all of the time to wrecking my life." The Pastor said, "Me too." He said, "No, no. You don’t understand. I mean, I am really constantly in this sort of internal struggle and battle every single minute of every single day and I can't get rid of it." I said, "Me too."

He said, "No, you don't understand. What I'm trying to tell you is this, if someone could prove to me that the bones of Jesus are still in the ground in the Middle East, I would leave here right now and get as drunk as I can possibly get, take every illicit drug that I could find, and have sex with any woman that would let me." The pastor said, "Me too. That's exactly what the Scripture teaches."

If Christ has not been raised, then eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow, we shall die. That's exactly what the scripture is. The question is, do you think that the bones of Jesus are still in the ground in the Middle East? He said, "No. That's why I'm having this constant sort of conflict going on in my mind and heart."

What the Pastor realized in that conversation, is that something had gone badly wrong in the way that he had communicated to his church members what the gospel is about.

What was wrong with the way this pastor had communicated to his congregation about the Gospel?

What Christianity is, that this young man thought that the sort of conflict and struggle that he was facing at the moment was a sign that he is not a believer. When in reality, the conflict and the struggle that he was facing, was a sign that he is a believer. He assumed that the Christian life is tranquility and that everyone else around him is simply humming hymns in their minds right now and that he is the one who is in this state of internal siege.

When in reality, tranquility and living a life that is internally untroubled is not a sign of a believer, but of an unbeliever. The spirit bears witness to our spirit, Romans chapter eight, that we are children of God and how does that happen? We cry out Abba Father. That is a sense of constantly being reminded of the fact that we are deficient, constantly being reminded that we are vulnerable, and constantly being reminded that we need a savior and we need the spirit in order to drive us forward.

That is something that this young man missed and I think many people miss it because one of the things that I find is that often the people who are the most troubled about they're standing before God, who are Christians, are often the people who are actually spiritually the most mature and spiritually being grown up and sanctified by the Spirit and they don't understand that the life that we're living in this time between the times is going to be one of constant temptation and constant spiritual warfare.

What I want us to do is to look tonight at the ways that the conscience interacts with temptation in its various forms. The first thing that I want us to understand is that when we talk about temptation, a lot of times what we think about is something really specific. We think about the kind of external temptation that says come and do something that is immoral, in the scene from Pinocchio with the bad kids trying to summon him on to do something bad. Sometimes that's what temptation looks like but often, temptation is far different from that.

What I want to suggest to us tonight is that the way that the conscience is formed in a kind of a battleground of temptation really has to do with three questions. The three questions that you're going to be asking yourself repeatedly over and over and over again, if you're following Christ and the first one of those questions is,

Who are you?

If you think about what this text of scripture says, "Jesus becomes like his brothers and sisters, takes on our humanity, and is tempted in every way that we are and yet without sin, so that he may be a merciful and sympathetic high priest." He joins with us not just in our humanity, but he also is taken into this testing ground of temptation that the gospel writers tell us about, particularly Matthew and Luke. You think about how that happens, Jesus, right after his baptism, is driven out into the wilderness by the Spirit, Matthew tells us, and there he is tempted for 40 days.

While he's there, you'll notice this theme that comes up in Matthew repeatedly, in which the voice that comes to Jesus says, "If you are the Son of God," fill in the blank. If you are the Son of God, turn these stones into bread, if you are really the Son of God, then throw yourself from the pinnacle of the temple. If you are really the Son of God, then bow down and worship me and I will give you all of the kingdoms of the world. The question is who are you?

What are some of the ways we tend to think of ourselves during times of temptation?

That's something the scripture says, goes all the way back to the account that we have in Genesis of the fall of humanity, where you have the picture of the serpent saying to the woman, "Eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil." What he's trying to do initially in that conversation, is to question who she is. Who are you? He wants her to think of herself either as something more than human, "In the day that you eat of it, you will be as a God knowing good from evil." Think of herself as a God or to think of herself as something less than human.

She has been given, Genesis one and two, dominion over all of the beasts of the field and everything that creeps along the ground and then in Genesis three, the picture is of a beast of the field exercising dominion over her. Think of yourself as an animal. Think of yourself as simply being driven by appetite and simply being driven by instinct. That is exactly the question that comes up constantly in every human life. Think of yourself either as being something more than human, if you are really the Son of God. Think of yourself not as being a child of God. Think of yourself as being a God alone. In that, making your own determination about what is good and evil, what is moral and immoral, what is right and what is wrong.

You can see that work itself out in the way that whatever our particular point of vulnerability is the way that we tend to rationalize whatever it is that we're doing, whatever decision that we're making in order to get that promotion or whatever reaction that we're having to that person in the moment, we're able to somehow categorize that in ways that we can rationalize it because we think that we're special We think that we're somehow above all of that or think of yourself as being something less than human. Think about yourself as simply a creature of instinct and a creature of your appetite. It's the question of who are you?

When in reality, what the scripture is constantly saying to us is we are creatures but we are creatures who are children. We are those who are created in the image of God and we are those who have access to God. Through faith and through the Spirit, we are those who are claimed.

You think about what's going on in the temptation of Jesus, temptation that the Bible says is going to be mirrored in your own lives. That's going to come with a voice that has been pronounced at the baptism, you are my beloved Son, and with you I am well pleased, being constantly questioned. If you are, if you are, who are you really and the minute that you stop seeing yourself in Christ, which means that you stop seeing yourself as a sinner in need of grace and/or you stop seeing yourself as loved and received by the Father through Jesus, then you have become confused about that initial question of who are you. That's the first question.

The second question is......

What do you want?

What is it that you actually want? Scripture says, Jesus is tempted in every way that we are except without sin. Sometimes people are confused when they come to this passage of scripture because they assume that when it says that Jesus is able to be a sympathetic high priest that the sort of sympathy that Jesus is giving is the kind of sympathy that we would give, which is essentially often just a, yeah, I know how it is. I have all of my sinful patterns. When I find someone who has similar sinful patterns, I'm able to give that person an excuse for that. That is not what sympathy means here. Instead, it means that Jesus has walked through this. He has been through this. He has been tempted and tested. There is no sin found in him so that he can be a representative and so that he can be a high priest.

Now, the issue here, what do you want, is about the fact that there is nothing that you are going to have in your life that's a point of vulnerability that is not a distortion of something that is created to be good. The spiritual forces of darkness have nothing to work with. They cannot create anything. All they can do is to take something that has been created toward for good and turn that and twist that, sometimes slightly and sometimes markedly. The image that the scripture continually gives is of livestock. We remember that when we think about Jesus saying, "I'm the Good Shepherd. I lead the sheep," but the scripture also uses that livestock imagery in the other direction. You're being shepherded. You're being farmed toward death.

Why does Scripture often use the imagery of livestock?

How many of you have ever hear of Temple Grandin? She is an autistic agriculture specialist, who, one of the things that she did in her life was to come up with a more humane way to slaughter cattle because she recognized in the beef industry that what you don't want is a situation in which cattle are being suddenly slaughtered not only because that's not humane, but also because it ruins the meat. You have stress hormones everywhere.

She created this invention called the Stairway to Heaven, where she came in and said, "You don't want anything in the field of vision of the cow that is in any way out of the ordinary." If there's a yellow jacket that is over the fence post every other day, you keep it there. You also don't want sudden turns. You want to get the cow from the stall to the place of slaughter in a very gently, turning sort of way, so that the cow comes to believe that it's being led to pasture and then suddenly in an instant is gone.

Well, that's exactly the way that the assault upon the conscience works. If you have something that is presented to you that is obviously wrong, obviously and shockingly unjust, or obviously and shockingly immoral, you are going to be alarmed by that. You're going to react with a sense of I know this is not the direction that I should go. That's not the way the world, the flesh, and the devil work. Instead, what they do is to work in a way that is particularly tailored toward you to where your desires, to where your passions, to where your aspirations, to where the things that you admire, and to slowly bring you forward little by little by little in compromising the conscience in ways that then are able to take you forward in deeper darker way.

Again, this sense of a darkness all it can do is to distort the good design and good purpose of God. What does God do? God prepares us for life in the kingdom by giving small things to which we're called to be faithful in a way that ultimately then is given over to greater things that is mirrored in the powers of darkness, taking you into compromises of the conscience in small things, so that you can then become habituated and ready for that so that you can then be directed toward compromises of the conscience in large things. When you're thinking about these questions of, what do I want, what is it that God has... What is it that is actually driving me sometimes in ways that I don't even see or know, that means you have to have a great deal of self-awareness.

There are forces in the universe that actually already know these things about you. The biggest fear sometimes that we have is that we will not get the things that we want, things that we start out aspiring toward early in our lives, when in reality, the scariest thing that we can face is getting what it is that we want. The desires, the things that we're asking for, the things that we're wanting, that's the second key question.

The third is.....

Where are you going?

Where is it that you are heading? Again, the way that the conscience can be attacked is in more than just one way. You can either have your conscience so reworked that you think that no matter what it is that you do, no matter who it is that you become, that you're still going to reach your ultimate goal. God doesn't care what I do or you can have that opposite mentality that no matter what it is that I do, I am judged, I am already a ruined and erect prospect. Whatever it is that I do, I might as well do whatever it is that I'm being driven toward right now.

Like the kid who's living in a home where she has a father who is constantly criticizing everything that she does. Eventually, often, she's going to get the mentality, "Well, I can never please him anyway. I might as well just do whatever it is that I want to do." That that same mentality can show up if we don't see what it is that God has given to us in terms of the promises, that we are not existing simply for the present moment. The present moment is a vapor. Present moment is going away very, very quickly. The time that we have been given right now, every conversation, every encounter with every other person, every experience that we have is intended to shape us and form us for what it is that God has waiting for us in the kingdom of God.

Now, you'll notice those three questions. Notice how those things show up in that time of testing in the life of Jesus, Matthew chapter four. Jesus here is being tempted in three different ways. One of them is turned these stones into bread.

Why bread?

Now, what's the serpent doing? Who are you? If you are the Son of God, turn these stones into what? Not into nutrient tablets that can keep you sustained, but into bread, a very familiar food source that would have immediately lit up the imagination and survive.

What the devil is trying to do with Jesus is not just to tempt him, he's trying to adopt him. He's trying to say to him, "You do not have a father who will feed you." As Jesus himself has said, "What father would say to his son, when his son asks for bread, here is a rock?" The devil says, "Look around you. You're hungry and there's nothing around you but rocks. Turn these stones into bread at my direction." He is attempting to be a father to Jesus by questioning whether or not Jesus, in fact, has a father. What did Jesus do? He recognize this and he identifies himself with Israel, in the wandering in the wilderness and Deuteronomy six through eight, and says, "God has said, 'Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.'"

Now, what Jesus is talking about there is that entire section where God has said, I made you hunger, for what purpose? Not because I've forgotten you, not because I don't love you, not because I've abandoned you but I made you to hunger for a short period of time so that you would know that you do not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes through my mouth.

The temptation to see ourselves simply as the collection of our appetites is something that is confronting us constantly. It's something that is confronting us, I started to say even in a setting like this, but especially in a setting like this because the appetite that again is created for good purposes, the appetite for power to be able to do good things, the appetite for position in order to do good things, the appetite for work to do good things, can very easily be turned and directed in a way in which we see ourselves simply as that collection of all of those appetites. We start to live for bread alone, even if that bread is perfectly good, even if that bread is something that we are right to want. The question is whether or not we're simply going to feed or whether we're going to be fathered. That's the first temptation.

The second one is a little bit more difficult to understand. If you are the Son of God, throw yourself from the pinnacle of this temple.

Why is Jesus being tempted this way as opposed to some other?

Because what the devil is saying to Jesus is, "Throw yourself from the temple and prove that the promises that God has given to you are correct. I will bear you up, so that you do not even scratch your foot against a stone." There's that temptation to say, because God's favor upon me is invisible. I have to verify it. I have to know it internally and even externally.

You think about the way that there are many people out there right now who constantly are living their lives with this sense of can God really have forgiven me? Can God really love me? Sometimes what we want is some sort of artifact evidence that we have that somehow we can have notarized. Sarah became a child of God and God loves her and God is intending to do whatever it takes to conform her to the image of Christ. We want to have that so that we can sit and pull it out and look at it, when we're in those moments of feeling abandoned by God.

When in reality, what God has said is the promises that are being given to you by the Word are received by faith, but it is a faith that we cannot see by sight right now. The temptation that the devil is giving to Jesus is you cannot really believe God, when God says, "You are my beloved Son and with you, I am well pleased." That's probably the biggest temptation that I personally face, is the sense of what I want in my flesh to be able to do is to come before God with here are all of my achievements. Here's all of the things that I have done for you and why? Because that you can measure.

Instead of coming before God to say, "I don't have anything to bring to you. All I can do is to receive the word that you have given to me. Whoever comes to me, I will, in no way cast out." That quest for verification and that quest, not just for this internal verification, but for this external sort of vindication. If Jesus throws himself from the temple, everyone sees him publicly being rescued by God.

When you're in the middle of a breakup with somebody, what you want? You want your friends to say, "Yeah, you're so much better off. She's crazy. He's a jerk. That person, I can't believe the things that that person did to you." You want this sense of external kind of vindication that you're in the right and they're in the wrong.

Now, that doesn't just apply to some sort of relational breakup. That applies to every single aspect of life. Why? Because what we're really clamoring for and what we really want is what the Bible defines as glory. That sense of being proven to be right, that sense of being proven to be those who are in the category of the right people as opposed to those who are of the wrong people. That is something that is specially meant manifests itself in a cultural moment like the one that we have right now in the United States of America and around the world, in which social media can make immediate that sense of, of what tribe do I belong in and what tribe do I not belong too?

What are the dangers of having a tribe mentality when it comes to social media?

If I see myself in terms of my tribe. It means that everything that applies to this group is good because that makes me able to see myself as good and everything that applies to the people who are not us is bad and evil and to be lashed out at, sometimes even with almost animalistic sort of ways.

That's the temptation that's here and it can easily manifest itself into a kind of enraged ineffectiveness where we're in a constant cycle of outrage. All for reasons that have everything to do with us. When the person says, "I think that Christians are stupid and evil," the sort of reaction that I have internally is not because I'm so zealous to defend the name of Christ. Jesus isn’t worried about it. It's because I'm so zealous to defend myself. If you're saying that Christians are evil and stupid, then you're saying that I am evil and I am stupid and I'm going to find a way to win and the way I'm going to win is to humiliate you on social media. That's the second temptation of Christ whether or not I'm going to be vindicated.

Then, there's the third one, which is again, one that we don't immediately resonate with, "If you bow down and worship me," says the devil, "I will give to you all the kingdoms of the world."

How does this third temptation relate to us?

If you have Jesus directly ruling over all of the kingdoms of the world, you have no Roman slave trade. You have no killing of innocent civilian populations. You have no deaths by malaria. You have no pornography. You have no abortion. You have no human trafficking. You have no unjust lending practices and the grinding of the faces of the poor into the ground. The devil is willing to make that deal as long as you have no cross.

Morality, without the gospel is a deal the devil is willing to make every single time and to have this sense of I can exalt myself in some way, the temptation, the vulnerability there is one that constantly, again, questions who are you? Are you really a child of God? Who are you? Are you really an heir of the promises that God has given to you? Jesus is able to say, "I will not receive all the kingdoms of the world," not because the kingdoms of the world are not a good thing to have. He ultimately will have them but how does he get them? Through the way of the cross. You ultimately have glory but how do you get glory? Through the way of the cross, self-bearing of a cross suffering with him for a little while that we may be glorified with him, counting others as more important than ourselves. That is what Jesus walks through here.

Now, what you're going to face is that you're going to be facing all of the time, all of these various aspects of temptation. You're going to have a conscience that is to greater or lesser degrees aware of what's going on around you. What's important for you to do and what's important for you to know? It's important for you to constantly be aware, first of all, of your identity. Who are you? What does it mean for you to be loved by God? What does it mean for you to really have your sins forgiven? What does it mean for you to have the sort of access that the book of Hebrews talks about here where you're able to boldly come before the throne of grace.

One of the easiest ways that you can find whether or not you have lost a sense of your identity is in terms of your prayer life. If you find yourself, where it is very difficult to pray, and if you find yourself going for long periods of time without praying, wonder what is going on. It could be that what's happening in your life is that you have this sort of pride in the flesh that doesn't really think that you need to pray.

Nobody, when the car is spinning out of control and everything's in slow motion, stops and says, "You know, I probably ought to pray and keep up with my spiritual disciplines." When the car is spinning out of control, you're screaming out, "God, help me!!" Or it might be the exact reverse. It might be what's happening with the man and the woman in Genesis three of a hiding in the garden for the voice of God because you're ashamed and you think that somehow God would not receive you, if he were to see you. When in reality, what the Gospel says to you is that there is nothing happening in your life right now and there is nothing that has happened in your life in the past that Jesus is shocked by.

In contrast, there are certain places that someone else may well be able to go that someone else would say, "I could not handle that because of my particular aspect of vulnerability." Then to constantly be reminding yourself of where it is that you're actually going. What it is that you're really longing for? If what you're grappling with is the sense of hyper ambition and status and power to recognize, why do I want that? It's because God has given me a longing to share in glory and I'm being directed towards something that is far less than that, that is going to ultimately leave me disappointed and that is ultimately going to come crashing down. We need to think about what the promises God has made to us actually are about.

Think about the warnings. Don't become the sort of person that is driven purely by your own ambitions, hearing that sense of alarm that then slowly fades. Where you find yourself saying things that you wouldn't have said before. Hearing yourself or recognizing that you're thinking things that you wouldn't have thought before. Where is it that I'm actually going? I'm going to a kingdom that has been bought by the blood of Christ at the cross. That means I am a cross-shaped person who's willing to endure suffering and humiliation because I have been crucified with Christ and recognize that when you're going through all of these things, the sense of pain and alarm and sometimes even exhaustion that comes along with battling whatever your particular vulnerabilities are, is not a sign that God has left you.

Don't worry when you're fighting. Worry when you have stopped fighting. When the fight is taking place, remind yourself this is the presence of the Spirit and the Spirit is pointing me in a particular direction, not because God is trying to withhold something from me, but because God is trying to take me somewhere in the kingdom of God.

Adapted from: https://erlc.com/resource-library/capitol-conversations-episodes/christian-ethics-with-russell-moore-part-two/