I began this message showing the video of the Monty Python sketch, The Dead Parrot. Obviously wouldn’t work in many churches.
Death isn’t always that funny, as a matter of fact even the passing of a Parrot is seldom amusing. It isn’t always an easy subject to talk about and if you’ll pardon the pun there is no easier way to kill a conversation then to start talking about death. Our death, their death or anyone else’s death. It’s just not a fun topic.
But there is a certain finality to death, we know that death is an end. At least to a particular segment of life. When you are dead you are dead, you normally don’t get up from your death bed it is usually a pretty permanent situation. Which probably why Paul uses it as an analogy for the believers dealing with the sinful nature in their lives.
In the Bible we read this remarkable statement that Paul wrote, it’s in 2 Corinthians 5:14 Whatever we do, it is because Christ’s love controls us. Since we believe that Christ died for everyone, we also believe that we have all died to the old life we used to live. Now isn’t that a charming thought? We have died to the old life we used to live.
Now to be frank most of us have problems with dying once in a lifetime let alone having to die a couple of times. It was Robin Williams who said, “Death is nature’s way of saying, Your table’s ready.”
And David Niven who said “I won’t go, I’ll kick and scream and make a terrible fuss” And oh how human was Woody Allen’s thought when he said “I’m not afraid to die, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” And yet Paul is saying, “We need to be willing to die to our own way of life, it needs to be voluntary.”
So what is Paul saying, what does he mean by “we have all died to the old life”? Surely he doesn’t mean “die” in the strictest sense of the word which means “To stop living, to become dead” I mean really, let’s think about this, that would get a little old wouldn’t it, actually falling over dead? Paul frequently uses the analogy of death in his letters and that is probably because he was so familiar with the concept.
Very few churches would be interested in Paul as a pastor. He was forever in trouble with the law, being run out of town and if he wasn’t being scourged he was getting stoned. A man like that in the pulpit, well he just wouldn’t do the image of the church any good at all.
So it was in a very real sense that Paul encountered death on a daily basis and if you talk to people who go through those types of experiences they will tell you that in order to cope they either ignore the possibility of their demise or they face death and come to grips with the reality of their own mortality. And so maybe when Paul talks about dieing to self he simply found a way to deal with this constant spectre of death that hovered over him.
However if we look at this one statement in the context of some other scriptures we see a trend.
Romans 6:6 Our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ so that sin might lose its power in our lives. We are no longer slaves to sin. or Romans 6:2 Of course not! Since we have died to sin, how can we continue to live in it? and in Galatians 2:19 . . . I died to the law so that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ. I would suspect that Paul was speaking of something greater then a literal death, and something infinitely more painful then mere physical death. You see I think that what Paul was experiencing was a daily crucifixion of self.
The scripture that we are looking at today is found in 2 Corinthians which is the eighth book of the New Testament. The Author was Paul who had also written the book of 1 Corinthians. Both of these letters were addressed to believers in the city of Corinth, which if we pull down our trusty map discover was situated in the country of Greece. The book was written around AD 55. The reason for the letter was to address the strife that plagued the church in Corinth.
Paul understood what strife and bickering in the church was primarily caused by and that is the dual nature of humanity. In various places in the Scriptures Paul refers to our natural self as the “Old Man” that is what many would call our carnal spirit. As well we read scriptures that refer to the believer as being a new creature, putting on the new man experiencing the new birth or becoming new.
Ephesians 4:23-24 Instead, there must be a spiritual renewal of your thoughts and attitudes. You must display a new nature because you are a new person, created in God’s likeness—righteous, holy, and true.
One astute person described it like two dogs fighting inside of him, one representing evil and wickedness and one representing goodness and purity. Someone asked him, “Well which one wins” and his response was “Whichever one I say sic him to”
Paul was saying that the first thing that he had to do every morning of life was to grab the old man by the throat, wrestle him to the floor, stretch him out on a cross, try to hold him in place well he got the nails out of his mouth pick the hammer up from the floor and hammer the old nature down. Every day Paul started by dying, dying to self and to the old nature, or carnal spirit or whatever you want to call it.
But how is this “Old Nature” manifested? How does it appear? Galatians 5:19 (NIV) The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: Now if’n we were truthful, most us don’t need a list of sins, do we? We don’t stand and say let’s see is this a sin or isn’t it? Paul’s right, the acts of the sinful nature are obvious, and the most obvious thing about it is the fact that in the vast majority of cases the reason we do those acts is because we want to. Plain and simple.
The reason most of don’t drive the nails home while we have the chance is we’re too busy helping the old nature to it’s feet and brushing it off. If we are to die daily to sin, it will have to be by our own hand. If you look at that list in Galatians 5:19-21 (NIV) The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissension’s, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God. Now most of us have no problem with the biggies. Hey I have no problem dying daily to that list, I get up in the morning and say OK old man you have had it, today I’m going to die to sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; drunkenness, orgies, and the like No problem there, right? The biggies are easy but what about the middle ones? It’s easy to focus on things that don’t affect us, but when I start talking about the areas that people are struggling with they say “Hey, hold on preacher now you’ve gone from preaching to meddling.”
Most of us would fine it easy to die to witchcraft, drunkenness and orgies, but what about hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissension’s, factions and envy? In the real world those are the things that we have problems with on a daily basis, and those are the types of things that we have to die to everyday. Now the easiest thing for us to do would be to go down the list one by one, and do a short dissertation on each one. The problem is that it’s like the preacher who said that there are 497 sins. Well after the service some of his people came up to get the list because they were afraid they might have missed some.
The trouble with relegating personal holiness to a list of dos and don’ts is multitude. First it puts you back under the law, which was what, Jesus wanted to eliminate by dying on the cross for us. It says if you do this, this and that and don’t do these things over here then you are a Christian. But doing things or not doing things doesn’t make you a Christian; it is the saving power of Jesus Christ. In the same way you’re not sanctified because of the way you live, you live that way because you’re sanctified.
You see a dog’s not a dog because he barks, he barks because he’s a dog. The second problem with a list is somehow if something is outside the list then we think it must be outside the Lordship of Christ. What happens is it leads people into the mind set of saying “You know pastor, I checked out that list you read in Galatians 5 and even though it does mention sexual immorality and impurity it doesn’t say anything about lust or internet pornography so I guess I’m in luck right?” Wrong! Holiness and the Christian life don’t simply deal with lists they deal with the heart. They don’t simply deal with actions they deal with motives. You see once we reduce the holy life to doing this and not doing that than it becomes nothing more then a moralistic attempt to get into heaven by our own means.
So if you can be sanctified or for that matter saved by simply following a list of dos and don’t then why for do you need God? The reason Jesus came and died on a cross was because mankind didn’t have what it takes to get to God through is own righteousness. And the reason he sent the Holy Spirit was because we don’t have what it takes by ourselves to live a Christian life after we become Christians.
The question then is how do we avoid these acts of the sinful nature, which are so obvious? Good question, I’m glad you asked. It all goes back to the original statement , “We have all died to the old life we used to live” Well then what makes you dead? 1) You don’t move 2) You have no brain activity, kind of sounds like Saturday afternoon 3) You don’t breathe and 4) There is not heart beat.
The list of what makes you dead goes on and on, but listen up because this is the most important. When you are dead you will have no will of your own. From the point of death on, somebody else is going to make the decisions for you. You’re not going to say “Yo, excuse me, I definitely recalled wanting to be buried in my brown suit and this is my blue suit. Brown, I wanted brown, can anybody hear me, is anybody listening?”
You say “Oh no Denn, I have been very specific about what I want, it’s all written down.” Sure and people will do what they want to do. And if they want to bury you in your blue suit instead of your brown suit then they will bury you in your blue suit. What are you going to do if they don’t do what you want? Come back and haunt them? You might as well admit it. When you are dead somebody else is going to be in charge and they are going to have the last word.
Another favourite story, I have a lot of favourite stories and you are so lucky because I share them with you. A lady’s husband passed on and after the funeral was all done the lawyer called to tell her that in her husbands will he had left everything to the dog. Well she was livid and rushed down to the cemetery to see if she could change the tomb stone, but it was too late. The inscription had already been carved and it read, “Rest in Peace” so she had them add four short words, “Until we meet again.”
That then is the entire secret, in a nut shell. When you die daily you are simply giving up your will. And in a world that stresses looking out for number one, that can be a tough one even for Christians. In every area of our life we need to ask ourselves, “Is this pleasing to God, is this what God would want?”
It becomes essential in the life of the church, not to ask “How will this affect me but how will this affect others?” To ask ourselves “What is the will of God here and am I in favour of it because it will benefit me or because it will further the cause of the kingdom of God.”
I am convinced that those of you who made financial commitments and sacrifices to see the vision of our new church become a reality didn’t do it just to have a church building. There are cheaper ways to do that simply go to a church that already has a building. But the sacrifices were made because you believed that by making those sacrifices that more people would be introduced to Jesus. And so your dollars will have an eternal impact on the lives of others.
Money that could have been spent on temporal pleasures and earthly things, not bad things, just other things, was instead invested into the kingdom. And it was done because you were able to put God’s purposes above your purposes.
It’s not as easy as it sounds because dead is dead and it is a hundred percent commitment. You’re either dead or you’re not dead, there is no middle of the road, it’s like being pregnant, you either is or you isn’t. You may say that you’re half dead but until you is all dead you ain’t dead at all. When you give your will over to God it means you have given your ambitions, your aspirations, all your present and all your future to God. Period. His plans and yours may coincide and they probably will, but if they don’t and you’re truly dead you will follow his will because not only do dead men tell no tales, they don’t complain and rebel either.
Now the main reason that this seems so hard to us is because we figure that we are smarter then God, and so we think that our way is always the best way, even if it’s not God’s way. You know I get the biggest charge out of people who tell me, “As sure as I say ‘I don’t want to be a pastor or a missionary’ God will call me to be one” or when pastors say “ I’d better be careful about saying ‘I’d never go there’ or God will surely send me there.”
If I say I don’t want to do that God will make me do it. What type of warped view do they have of God? Do they think God sits around heaven and says, “hey Pete, Denn doesn’t want to be a preacher, just for a laugh let’s call him into the ministry”
That isn’t how my Bible describes God instead it says in Matthew 7:9-11 You parents—if your children ask for a loaf of bread, do you give them a stone instead? Or if they ask for a fish, do you give them a snake? Of course not! If you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask him.
If we believe the Bible then we have to believe that our Father in heaven wants only the very best for us, and that if we surrender our will to Him then He will do the very best for us.
The question this morning has to be this, Are you dead? Are you dying? Or are you kicking and screaming and making a terrible fuss?
Hope you enjoyed the message, PowerPoint is available, email me at denn@bccnet.ca or visit www.powerpoint4preaching.com
