INTRO:
In a world where printed books and media are declining, and more people are opting to do their reading online, you can bet that publishers are doing all that they can to grab your attention with what they believe will actually sell.
I could have picked a lot of magazines to use as examples, but I want us to examine just the cover of the latest issue of SELF Magazine. (I display image of Sept 2011 cover)
It features Jennifer Hudson, who was discovered on American Idol, and who has gone on to be a successful recording artist and actress.
Most stuff that people like to read these days centers around some predictable themes:
FOOD - Guilt-Free Burgers
THE BODY - Erase 8 Lbs, Foods for Glowing Skin, Jennifer’s Weight Loss Diaries
SEX - The two minute trick for more (and Better!) Sex
MONEY - Do what you love and get paid for it
The whole personality of this publication is very surface-level and commercial isn’t it?
Undoubtedly, the picture we see on the cover has been photoshopped to make sure her appearance is as close to flawless as possible.
Self Magazine is betting their income on the idea that for us, what we care about most is Eating, our Physical Body, Sex, and Possessions.
I’ve heard it said that Lifestyle is the new Baal. To many people who surround us, there is nothing more important to them than that they at least maintain the appearance of a certain lifestyle. We want to look a certain way, we want our relationships to appear a certain way, we want to have a lot of the right kinds of things. And if you do all this, the world says you’re a winner.
No matter what else is going on in the world, make your SELF a priority!
But as the family of God, this provides us with a real dilemma, doesn’t it?
We want to honor God, but we’re also committed to the idea that if we honor God, he should reward us with this same lifestyle that everyone around us wants. We scratch God’s back, and he’ll scratch ours. We honor God if God will honor our boundaries.
This love of lifestyle that surrounds us makes it hard for us to put into practice verses like Romans 12:9, “Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good.”
For a Christian, Paul says that sin should be unthinkable. If God is our all in all, then whatever runs contrary to him should not even be an option for us.
But if Lifestyle rules, sin might be undesirable, but it isn’t unthinkable.
Many things that Scripture would call sin, culture would say are undesirable, but not unthinkable options. Abortion, or greed, or gluttony, or dishonesty...all of these things are undesirable, but if they help you maintain your lifestyle, they remain justifiable. For those of us fully committed to Christ, though, sin is to be unthinkable.
Perhaps the words of Psalm 36:2 have become eerily true around us: “In their own eyes they flatter themselves too much to detect or hate their sin.”
Quite regularly, we hear language that says, “You Owe It To Yourself...to do this, to buy this, to experience this, to own this...”
God’s will is a good thing, even a desirable thing, but it is still treated as but one of several options. The idea of putting anything else above our own desires is what has become the unthinkable option in our country.
ILLUS: I bet a lot of you remember the movie Titanic. That song came out, and for a few days we loved Celine Dion, until we’d heard it so many times we started wishing we could put her on that boat to sink with the rest of them.
Titanic was a movie that was loosely based on the true story of the great unsinkable ship that became a living embodiment of irony. It was quite sinkable.
The movie had incredible visuals. It was a magnificent boat, and watching the boat smash into the iceberg and eventually sink was both horrible and captivating.
But as the ship began to sink, there were a couple of scenes that the writers decided to portray in ways very differently than what really happened.
When the Titanic went on its first and only voyage, passengers included most of what would have been the Forbes 400 of the time. Many of the world’s wealthiest businessmen died on the Titanic. In the movie, you see some heated moments where the greedy businessmen start pushing others aside to make sure they get on the life boats. Apparently all 1st Class passengers are 3rd class human beings. It takes some of the sailors pointing guns at the rich guys to make sure that it is women and children who get onto the life rafts.
But do you know that in reality, nothing like that happened?
John Jacob Astor was the richest man in the world at the time. He reportedly fought his way to a boat, then made sure his wife and children got on. He stepped back and waved goodbye.
Benjamin Guggenheim refused to take a seat. He said, “Tell my wife I played the game straight to the end. No woman shall be left aboard this ship because Benjamin Guggenheim was a coward.”
Why make this change to the story? It seemed too unthinkable to the movie makers that wealthy people could value a code of honor so dearly that they would be willing to give their lives rather than to break it. If you got to the top, surely you’d sacrifice a little person rather than give up an opulent lifestyle.
There is a word I want to talk about this morning. For some, it might seem like an ugly word. It is the word “submission.” That word doesn’t fly well in America, does it? We think of submission as something you would do, only if you’ve been forced into it.
I believe a central part of what it means to be the Church is to be a people who live our lives in full submission to God.
Submission is a subject that has sadly been mishandled in many churches. Most of the time we talk about it in the context of marriage, and often in a lopsided fashion. When it is taught badly, people usually respond in one of two ways:
they live a very self-loathing lifestyle where they are miserable but feel they have no say in the matter.
they ignore all passages that deal with the subject.
I believe that Scripture gives us a better option than either of these.
Let’s talk for a minute about what submission is NOT.
Submission is NOT self-hatred.
Many believe that if you give in to someone else, you are clearly guilty of not loving yourself. Some people have tried to practice submission by always treating their own thoughts, dreams, and talents as if they are worthless. God does not believe you are worthless. It would be difficult to count the number of times in Scripture that God defends the poor and the weak by saying, “I am their creator...they’re made in my image, and are precious to me.” Christ died because he knew you were worth saving.
Submission is NOT a loss of freedom.
Though we would readily say we are servants or slaves of Christ, we become this of our own choosing, and if at any moment we decided to walk away from God, we could. Many believe that submitting means you no longer have any input, but that you are entirely at the mercy of others.
Submission is NOT a loss of purpose.
ILLUS: Think of any movie you’ve seen where the main character goes on a journey of self-discovery. We’re taught that to know your purpose in life, you must ignore the advice of your loved ones, you stop worrying about the people around you. You take off on some adventure doing only what you want, going only where you feel like going, and in the process, you find your purpose. Submission is a fearful idea, because many think that giving up the driver’s seat of your life means that you can never discover your purpose or have a full and meaningful life.
Where our self-centered world thinks there could be nothing worse than submitting to anyone, what we discover in Christ is that submission is the true path to freedom.
Let’s talk about what submission is.
Submission is a spiritual discipline.
ILLUS: All disciplines exist to produce freedoms.
A person who practices a musical instrument with great discipline gains the freedom to perform beautiful songs when the occasion arises. Techniques, scales, repetition are sometimes dry and frustrating, but the freedom to perform comes from the discipline of practice. The same is true of sports training. Freedom to perform on the field.
The spiritual disciplines are not ends in themselves. It is a great thing for you to pray often. But the goal of prayer is not just that you pray. The purpose of prayer is to help us take time to think about God’s will for our life, and to let God form our heart to be more like his. It is through praying for our enemies that we learn to love them. The discipline of prayer gives us the freedom to think more like God thinks.
Similarly worship, fellowship, and Scripture are there to help shape us. They are not the goal; but are a means to a greater goal.
We practice submission because submission produces some beautiful freedoms.
By submission:
We are free from the burden of always having to get our own way.
Joseph continued to submit to God’s will long after it appeared that there was no point in continuing. He tried to share his God-given dreams with his family, and they hated him for it. He was sold in to slavery, but didn’t give up. He maintained his integrity. The world would have said that having some fun with the boss’ wife was justified. He couldn’t have afforded such a nice lifestyle had Joseph not managed his household so well. But Joseph maintained his integrity...and got punished anyway. Thrown into prison for several years. Even in prison, he could have become the meanest scoundrel of the bunch. We could read a story about how he ended up in prison, and we would probably say, “How could you blame him for becoming a tyrant? He had no choice!” But Joseph did have a choice, and he chose God. In the most unexpected turn of events, God enabled him to interpret dreams, and he ended up second in command over the nation. But even then, he didn’t let his success convince him that he no longer needed God to sustain him. He forgave his brothers, and showed them mercy instead of vengeance. Joseph submitted himself to God. So much of Joseph’s life involved him NOT getting his way. He didn’t want to be a slave, he didn’t want to go to jail, he didn’t want lies spread about him. But by giving God control, he was able to live free from the burden of always insisting on getting his own way.
I wonder how much unhappiness we experience because we think we always have to get what we want, when we want it. It takes an awful lot of energy to control the world, doesn’t it? What if we would submit to God, and accept that it’s ok for us not to always get exactly what we want?
By submitting ourselves to God:
We are free to see value in other people.
It is so liberating to love someone without having to demand they love us in return.
I really don’t have to be treated a certain way. I can celebrate for others when they have good news without having to compare myself to them.
If we have the mindset that my way doesn’t have to be the only way, it frees me to be happy for someone else whose way does succeed.
I’m no longer controlled by my bitterness and anger when someone doesn’t act toward me the way that they should.
Jesus described submission this way in Matthew 5:39: “If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.”
Submission doesn’t mean that our feelings, opinions, or talents don’t matter. It means that as people confident of our security in Christ, we can choose to value others, even if they don’t acknowledge it.
In Ephesians 5-6, the largest amount of space is spent telling husbands how they should be loving Christian leaders in their homes. But when Paul tells wives to submit to their husbands, children to obey their parents, and slaves to obey their masters, there’s some irony to it, from the world’s view. In this culture, wives had no choice but to submit. Children had no choice but to obey. Slaves had no choice but to serve. But in Christ, we can still choose the attitude that we’ll have while we serve. Your boss can give you orders, but it’s purely up to you whether you work diligently and gladly, or whether you bad mouth him as soon as he’s around the corner.
By submitting to God, we are free to see value in other people.
In Submission:
We are free to discover our true identity.
I wonder how different the world would be if many of our great heroes spent their time reading Self Magazine. What if Moses refused to go to Egypt because it would mess up his cattle business? What if Paul refused to go on a missionary journey because he might have gotten hurt? What if Jesus decided that dying in his early 30s by Crucifixion was too much of an imposition on his lifestyle. Whether we speak of Elijah, Jeremiah, Ruth, Esther, or Paul...who of these people didn’t find their greatest purpose in life giving God control rather than putting themselves first?
There is no greater example of submission than Christ himself. “Who, being in very nature God did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant...in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death; even death on a cross.”
In Jesus’ life there were no parts that were off limits to God. Whatever obedience required: nothing was too much, nothing was too far. In full submission to God, he accomplished the greatest good the world has ever seen. Our challenge is to be more like him.
