Takoma Park Baptist Church, Washington, DC October 19, 1986
Only this week they drove another nail in my coffin. Those tireless, relentless researchers who ferret out the causes of cancer and who puzzle out the hows and the whys of heart disease published findings designed to frighten the likes of me. I am one of those who begins his day with two or three cups of coffee at home, then comes to the office and plugs in the coffeemaker before saying hello to the secretary or opening the brief case. Now the newspaper says that researchers at Johns Hopkins University Medical School are able to point to a link between coffee drinking and heart disease in the sample they studied. Not what I wanted to hear, not the kind of results I was hoping for. I was so unnerved when I read it that I had to brew up a pot in order to steady my system. The one redeeming factor is that these researchers had established this connection, this linkage between coffee drinking and heart disease by studying the incidence of both in some 200 graduates of their own medical school. Ah, now I can take comfort; I am not a graduate of Johns Hopkins Medical School, so maybe it won't apply to me!
Nonetheless, we have in recent years had to learn to live with the language of heart disease, much of it centered on the way our eating and drinking habits affect that vital muscle. We have learned to count the cholesterol and to control the carbohydrates. We have twisted our tongues around words like polyunsaturated and angioplasty. People are actually clamoring to get open heart surgery; it used to be traumatic to have open heart surgery, but I gather that it is now so routine that you ain't anybody unless you've had it. It's the latest status symbol; and a triple bypass is nothing, you are not in the big leagues unless you can brag about quadruple or quintuple bypasses. All because the blood vessels serving the heart gather deposits and the deposits prevent the blood from flowing as it should, and thence disease, heart disease, from deposits in the heart.
The tough part about this, of course, is that everywhere we turn and read about this business we learn quickly that you and I are contributing to our own rapid demise. It's not only the coffee I guzzle several times a day, but it's also that tasty but deadly compilation of fats and sugars and oils and salt and all the rest of the stuff we stoke the furnace with. Somehow or another, the tastier it is the more deadly it is. The more that food reaches out and tempts you with its succulent smells and its tantalizing aromas, the more it is likely to be a contributor to those dangerous deposits in the heart. It's like the cartoon I saw some years ago, in which the stout lady was complaining to her friend, “Everything I like to do is either immoral, illegal, or fattening.” Wow! What world!
And don't tell me to go join our neighbors the Seventh Day Adventists and eat their diet. I'm afraid I'm still looking for meat, lean red meat. When my brother-in-law some years ago was confined to a Seventh Day Adventist hospital recovering from some broken bones, he insisted that his mother smuggle a hamburger in. I understand, I understand, don't you?
Deposits in the heart. We know that physically it's bad for us, but we just don't want to stop doing those things that leave those deposits. Deposits in the heart; we recognize what we should eat and what we should not eat, what we should and should not drink, but there is something so attractive and so addictive that we just go right on woofing down the fats and lining our throats with alcohol (there's another sermon, by the way: how even Baptist folks, who used to know better, get themselves into this trap). We just go right on, building up those deposits in the heart.
But what if I were to tell you this morning that there are some other deposits in the heart which no microscope would uncover, which no researcher would likely find through his statistical methods? What if I were to describe for you some more· deposits in the heart which are just as addictive as the fatty foods, just as intoxicating in their own ways as a couple of fifths of what they euphemistically call distilled spirits? What if I were to tell you this morning of yet more deposits in the heart, deposits which can become a life and death matter? Would you be interested? Would it matter to you? Would it be worth something to you?
All right, let's try. Deposits in the heart; what else besides the clog and clutter the cardiologists have to ream out of us because of our self-indulgent eating and our nonexistent exercise? Deposits in the heart:
I
The first of those deposits has an ugly name, a name that sounds more vicious and more deadly than any of those mind-bending medical terms, though its name is short and simple. This deposit in the heart is called sin. Sin is a deposit in the heart, in every heart.
Now again I say, no microscope will ever uncover it, no scientific instrument will ever detect it, no litmus paper will ever turn blue because of it, but sin is real, sin is pervasive, and what is more, sin is addictive and enslaving. That’s what our Scripture text is telling us: that sin is addictive and enslaving. Paul says that before faith came, before anyone becomes a Christian, we are confined, we are kept under restraint. He says, over here in Galatians 4, we who are in sin are no better than slaves; when we were children, we were slaves to the elemental spirits of the universe. Sin is enslaving and sin is addictive.
Now I am sure you would never know it to look at me, but I have a sweet tooth. I enjoy all the sticky, gooey, sugary stuff. I say you would never know it to look at me, because, well, why do you think I wear this big blousy robe up here in the pulpit? But I do have the proverbial sweet tooth. But let me tell you what I found out.
Back when I was in high school one day I was at home alone, and I got a bad case of the nibbles. Just had to have something to eat. So I dug around in my mother's storage cupboard and found a jar of brown sugar, obviously lumpy. I think they've found ways by now to get all the lumps out of brown sugar and make it slick and powdery, but frankly, I like mine the old-fashioned way – lumps. Lumps you can pick up with your fingers. Lumps you can pluck out of the jar and can pretend that you are, after all, doing somebody a favor, getting rid of that useless, unsightly lump. So that afternoon to stave off that bad case of nibbles, I popped a lump of brown sugar. Tasted awfully good. And I went back to my room to study some more, for about three minutes. I found myself on the way back out to the kitchen, to find another lump of brown sweet succulent delicious delightful sugar. Popped it in, went back to study, and this time stayed maybe two minutes, at the most. Went back to the cupboard, grabbed another lump; this time stayed there and rooted for lump number four. Then, because there were no more brown sugar lumps, and I could no longer pretend that all I was doing was getting rid of these unsightly things, I got a pinch of sugar, and then a spoon of sugar. Mmmmm; wow. No, I didn't finish it all off, not quite, but there was much mystery around the house a few days later when my mother needed that sugar for something she wanted to make. Wonder where all that brown sugar went?!
What's the point? Sin, like sugar, is addictive, but it does not satisfy. When you get into it just a little way, that's not enough. You want more. Sin, like sugar, is addictive, it does not nourish. Like sugar it gives a momentary rush of excitement or pleasure or fun, but it does not satisfy, it does not satisfy in any ultimate sense, it does not nourish.
And sin, like sugar, makes a deposit in the heart. Every time you sin and sin deliberately you deposit a little more glop and clutter in the heart and distance yourself that much more from fellowship with our God. You take a drink of alcohol and then find yourself wanting, needing more and more. You indulge in a sexual dalliance outside of marriage, then discover that anybody that winks at you halfway looks mighty good. You hate this person or that person and end up prejudiced against a whole group of people. I tell you, sin won't let you go. Sin enslaves, sin is addictive, sin keeps on tugging at your heart. And before long you have pigged out on sin as I did on sugar, and the damage is done: deposits in the heart.
II
Well, when you have a coronary occlusion (I hope our nurse and physician members will let me toss around the technical language as if I knew what I was talking about) – when you have a coronary occlusion, the indicated treatment many times is open heart surgery, it is an invasion of the chest cavity in order to treat and repair the heart. The physician, the surgeon comes in from outside and takes drastic action in order to deal with a potentially fatal problem. Something, someone, has to invade the human heart in order to save· it.
If this is true physically, how much more true it is spiritually. How we need an invasion from somewhere else, how we need a spiritual physician to enter and to carve away all that has stood in the way of God. Spiritual surgery is necessary in order to remove that infectious, addictive, enslaving sin.
And that, my friends, in simplest terms, is the good news for us. There is a surgeon above all surgeons, there is a great physician, and he is waiting to perform that surgery. Listen, listen to the scripture text: God sent forth his Son to redeem – God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts. God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts. God in Christ Jesus is dealing creatively and redemptively with the addiction of sin, and like a physician, like the greatest and most skillful of surgeons, He probes us and He slices through to the very core. He deals not just with the symptoms of our disease but also with the cause, He sends the Spirit of His Son into our hearts.
And more than that, our God deals creatively and redemptively with the enslavement that sin is. Our God says, “You are no longer going to be a slave to this; you are now my child. You are not going to serve this sin thing any longer, I will set you free, and free indeed, because you're my child, you're a child of the King, and you're free.” Says the apostle, "Because you are his sons – his daughters, his children – because you are his children, God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Daddy, Father. So through God you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son then an heir. A new deposit in your heart, driving out and banishing forever the deposit of sin. The deposit of the spirit of Christ.
It is said that once a soldier in the Russian army under the famous Czar Peter the Great was accused of treason against the czar. No amount of questioning and of torture could break him down and get a confession out of him. And so the czar, seeing that torture was getting nowhere, went up to the soldier, gave him one of those famous Russian bear hugs, and said, "I know you that you plotted against me, but whether or not you confess, you've been punished enough. Now I pardon you and I set you free. What do you say to that?" The newly pardoned soldier broke down immediately and confessed his guilt. Yes, he said, he had plotted to take the emperor's life, but now, because Peter had spared him, he was pledging his loyalty and his love. What was the czar's response? Not only to affirm the pardon but also to raise the man to the rank of colonel in his army.
The analogy may not be perfect, but it's close, it's close. God, knowing full well the deposit of sin in every human heart, reaches out in Christ Jesus to offer pardon and healing and redemption. And if only you and I will confess our sin and throw ourselves on his mercy, then he sends the Spirit of his son into our hearts – a glorious deposit in the heart -- and says, “No longer a slave but my son, my daughter, my child, a child of the Lord himself.”
And so this morning if in fact down in that heart of yours there are deposits and occlusions and all manner of things that block your way to the living God, then I urge you, I beg you, do not despair. But instead submit to some open heart surgery, tell our Christ your need and let that Spirit enter in to forgive and to cleanse. You need not fear; you are no longer a slave, but a child of His, a child of this great physician. The great physician now is near, the sympathizing Jesus, He speaks the drooping heart to cheer, O hear the voice of Jesus. Deposit in the heart.
