We're studying, as you know, in the book
of Genesis, and we are at chapter 34
in the exposition of that book.
And our subject and the message that will
follow later on is Jacob at Shechem, or
whirliness, its character and cure.
Jacob is now on his way back to
Bethel.
He should have gone right to Bethel, but
he did not.
He was very fearful of his meeting with
Esau, but that turned out much better than
expected.
However, it was evident that he acted with
a little bit of deceit toward Esau, because
he told him that he would follow him
to Seir, to the southeast, but as soon
as Esau passed over the horizon, he went
to the north and west, the exact opposite
direction.
Then he went down to Succoth, and there
at Succoth he built himself a house.
Now, the patriarchs were pilgrims and dwelt in
tents, the scriptures like to remind us, because
that is the kind of faith life to
which God called them.
Not to make a settled home and abode
here, or too settled a home on this
earth, because after all, we are heavenly citizens.
We are not citizens of the earth, ultimately.
But Jacob made himself a house and made
barns for his livestock, and then he moved
from Succoth to Shechem, and there it is
stated in the eighteenth verse of the preceding
chapter that he camped before the city.
So he's moving even closer to the pagan
world that was about him, and as the
separated servant of the Lord God, that's a
very dangerous position to be in.
It's not surprising then that we read in
the next chapter the thing that we read
concerning Jacob's child, Dana.
So in verse one we read, Now Dana,
the daughter of Leah, whom she had borne
to Jacob, went out to visit the daughters
of the land.
And when Shechem, the son of Hamor the
Hivite, the prince of the land, saw her,
he took her and lay with her by
force.
And he was deeply attracted to Dana, the
daughter of Jacob, and he loved the girl
and spoke tenderly to her.
So Shechem spoke to his father Hamor, saying,
Get me this young girl for a wife.
Now Jacob heard that he had defiled Dana,
his daughter, but his sons were with his
livestock in the field, so Jacob kept silent
until they came in.
It's rather strange that Jacob did.
We'll make a comment or two about that
later.
Then Hamor, the father of Shechem, went to
Jacob to speak with him.
Now the sons of Jacob came in from
the field when they heard it, and the
men were grieved and they were very angry
because he had done a disgraceful thing in
Israel by lying with Jacob's daughter, for such
a thing ought not to be done.
It's important that you notice that expression, has
done a disgraceful thing in Israel.
That indicates that the brothers knew something about
their special separated position so far as the
world was concerned.
They understood that this was a sin against
the calling of the nation.
Verse 8, But Hamor spoke with them, saying,
The soul of my son Shechem longs for
your daughter.
Please give her to him in marriage, and
enter to marry with us.
Give your daughters to us, and take our
daughters for yourselves.
Thus you shall live with us, and the
land shall be opened before you.
Live and trade in it, and acquire property
in it.
Shechem also said to her father and to
her brothers, If I find favor in your
sight, then I will give whatever you say
to me.
Ask me ever so much bridal payment and
gift, and I will give according as you
say to me.
But give me the girl in marriage.
The Jacob's sons answered Shechem and his father
Hamor with deceit and spoke to them, because
he had defiled Dana their sister.
And they said to him, We cannot do
this thing, to give our sister to one
who is uncircumcised, for that would be a
disgrace to us.
You see they do recognize their position as
a nation called of God for special service.
Only on this condition will we consent to
you, if you will become like us, that
every male of you be circumcised.
Then we will give our daughters to you,
and we will take your daughters for ourselves,
and we will live with you and become
one people.
But if you will not listen to us
to be circumcised, then we will take our
daughter and go.
Now their words seemed reasonable to Hamor and
Shechem, Hamor's son.
That's rather striking, because of course what they
were doing was using an ordinance of believing
people and applying it to unbelieving people in
order to deceive them.
It was of course of an evil thing
for the sons of Jacob in an evil
situation, dealing with evil people in this way.
In a sense it was like saying be
baptized and you will be one of us,
apart from any spiritual, true spiritual relationship to
the Lord God.
And it's not surprising that their words seemed
reasonable to Hamor and his father, and to
Shechem, Hamor's son, because the world doesn't understand
spiritual things.
If you say to them be baptized and
you're one of us, well that's, that makes
sense to them.
The imperative of a spiritual relationship to the
Lord God does not grip the world at
all, for they do not understand.
You should be in the audience this morning,
and if you are not a believer in
Jesus Christ, the Bible says, the natural man,
that's what you are, the natural man receiveth
not the things of the Spirit of God,
they are foolishness unto him.
Neither can he know them, for they are
spiritually discerned.
In fact, the very fact that you don't
understand what I'm talking about may be the
sign that you're not one of us.
And it also may be the way the
Holy Spirit would want to prick your conscience,
so that you might really discover where you
are and respond in faith to the Lord
Jesus Christ.
So it's not surprising this seemed very reasonable
to men of the world, but it was
very unreasonable in reality.
Verse 19, And the young man did not
delay to do the thing, because he was
delighted with Jacob's daughter.
Now he was more respected than all the
household of his father.
So Hamor and his son Shechem came to
the gate of their city, and spoke to
the men of their city, saying, These men
are friendly with us.
Therefore let us live in the land, and
trade in it.
For behold, the land is large enough for
them.
Let us take their daughters in marriage, and
give our daughters to them.
Only on this condition will the men consent
to us, to live with us, to become
one people, that every male among us be
circumcised as they are circumcised.
Will not their livestock and their property and
all their animals be ours?
Only let us consent to them, and they
will live with us.
And you can see of course the spiritual
frame of mind that these pagans have.
They are interested in the property and in
the intermarriage.
But the spiritual relationship with a people who
have the Abrahamic promises does not grip them
at all.
And all who went out of the gate
of his city listened to Hamor and his
son Shechem, and every male was circumcised.
All who went out of the gate of
his city.
Now it came about on the third day
when they were in pain, that two of
Jacob's sons, Simeon and Levi, Dinah's brothers, each
took his sword and came upon the city
unawares and killed every male.
And they killed Hamor and his son Shechem
with the edge of the sword, and took
Dinah from Shechem's house and went forth.
Incidentally, that verse together with a previous one
indicates that the relationship that Shechem had to
Dinah was not simply that of rape, but
was probably more like seduction.
And Jacob's sons came upon the slain and
looted the city because they had defiled their
sister.
They took their flocks and their herds and
their donkeys and that which was in the
city and that which was in the field,
and they captured and looted all their wealth
and all their little ones and their wives,
even all that was in the houses.
Then Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, you
have brought trouble on me by making me
odious among the inhabitants of the land, among
the Canaanites and the Perizzites.
And my men, being few in number, they
will gather together against me and attack me
and I shall be destroyed, I and my
household.
But they said, should he treat our sister
as a harlot?
May God bless this reading of his word.
The subject for this morning in the exposition
of the book of Genesis is, as I
mentioned in the reading of the scripture, Jacob
at Shechem or whirliness, its character and cure.
It is not so easy to define whirliness
as we often think.
The result is that the concept of unwhirliness
is often ridiculed and we find ourselves sometimes
a little speechless in defending the doctrine of
whirliness.
Whirliness is often equated with narrowness of mind,
straight laziness, a critical legalistic bent of mind.
Those that think that the concept is a
scriptural concept are often referred to caustically as
bitter people, even as ugly people, self-righteous
people.
And in the media, often they are pictured
as mean.
In fact, the word mean is often used.
In kindly notes by the believers, they are
put down as out of touch with the
realities of the world.
Yet the apostles speak of whirliness.
There is such a thing as whirliness.
The apostle Paul in Romans chapter 12 and
verse 1 and verse 2, after expounding the
mercies of God, says, I urge you therefore,
brethren, by the mercies of God to present
your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable
to God, which is your spiritual service of
worship, and do not be conformed to this
world.
So the apostle does know that there is
such a thing as a doctrine of whirliness.
It is taught in the word of God,
and we are warned against whirliness.
It is a real danger that faces not
only the church, but it faces individuals within
the church.
Church history will show you that whirliness has
been one of the reasons why the church
at certain periods in its history has been
weak.
Some students of church history, for example, have
pointed out the striking difference between the church
of the first two centuries after the days
of our Lord and the apostles, and then
the church in the fourth and fifth centuries.
Some have identified the causes.
One man has traced the causes to three
words, Constantine, patronage, and whirliness.
And one also, he goes on to say,
can see it in congregations where sensational or
other unworthy methods have been used to attract
people.
With the result that the ministry has robbed
of power, prayer meetings and Bible classes yield
to concerts, and we could add to bazaars
and various other types of so-called churchly
activity.
The hungry sheep look up and are not
fed by the Word of God, and the
church becomes indifferent and lethargic and finally dead.
The Word of God is simply now a
kind of little brief sermonette in which a
certain principle drawn from some passage of the
Bible is expounded.
You can see it in individual Christian lives,
of individuals who were converted, were full of
vim and vigor spiritually in the early days
of their Christian life.
To use Paul's words in the epistle to
the Galatians, they ran well, but something has
hindered them, and in the meantime they have
become dull and dead.
And criticized, and criticized others who are too
narrow, narrow-minded, straight-laced, and all of
the words used to describe the kind of
life that is not very comfortable for them.
Well, worldliness may be difficult to define, but
it's rather easy to feel and see.
And I mean feel in the sense of
to understand when it is there.
It's an atmosphere.
It's a kind of an innervating, poisoning, luring,
deadening atmosphere in which churches often fall.
Now when you look at Jacob's life, you
can sense that it is likely that that
is the reason why Jacob's life at this
particular stage of his life is on a
low level.
Penal had been a high-water mark.
He had wrestled with the Lord God and
had prevailed, the Scripture says.
He had struggled, and then finally in that
awful reserve of strength, the second person of
the Trinity, as the angel of Jehovah, had
touched his hip socket and dislocated it with
a simple touch.
Jacob was lame forever afterwards.
There was marked in his body the struggle
with the Lord God and the defeat, which
really was a spiritual victory, because Jacob, realizing
the person with whom he was struggling, began
now instead of resisting to cling.
And when he was clinging, he was also,
the Scripture is saying, weeping and praying for
deliverance, for the blessing of the Lord God.
And finally when the Lord God said, let
me go, because morning is coming, he said,
I will not let you go until you
bless me.
And he had been blessed.
It was a high-water mark.
But then Esau appeared over the horizon, and
the faith and trust that characterized Jacob seemed
to vanish with the appearance of his brother
who had threatened him that he would kill
him when he saw him.
Well now after he has been a little
deceitful with Esau, Jacob moves down to Succoth,
and there he builds for himself a house.
Now that, it seems, is out of harmony
with the kind of life that the patriarchs
lived.
In the New Testament, great stress is laid
upon the fact that the patriarchs lived by
faith and dwelt in tents.
But now Jacob is building himself a house.
He's building himself barns for his livestock.
He's going to take up a settled abode
at one particular place.
He buys land in the place where God
has given him the whole of the land.
And then we read, he comes down to
Shechem and camps before the city of the
unbelievers, right on the edge of the place,
very similar to Lot who dwelt in Sodom
and reaped also the results of that unhappy
move.
So the prevailer, the one who prevailed with
God, now has been prevailed against by the
world.
And spiritual leakage has constantly appeared in his
life now until, well someone has said spiritual
leakage always leads to spiritual loss.
And so Jacob now attached to the world,
near the hand, nearby the Gentiles, under their
influence.
It's not surprising that we read in Genesis
chapter 34 of this tragedy that happened to
his family.
In verse 1 and verse 2 of Genesis
chapter 34 we read of the seduction of
Dana.
And it seems as you read this that
this is directly related to his proximity to
the city of Shechem.
Now Dana, the daughter of Leah whom she
had borne to Jacob, went out to visit
the daughters of the land.
And when Shechem the son of Amor the
Hivite, the prince of the land, saw her,
he took her and lay with her by
force.
Dana, from the chronology of this account, appears
to have been a young girl of about
thirteen to fifteen years of age, but mature.
In the east in those days the ladies
matured much more quickly than they do in
the west today.
The results are what one might have expected.
One of the commentators describes it very vividly.
He says, poor girl, a moth fluttering about
a flame, a foolish fish nibbling at the
bait.
Was she lonely being the only girl?
Did she want to show off some piece
of jewelry or dress?
Did she long for more admiration, a fascinating
society, than she could find at home?
Was there a secret drawing to the young
men of the place?
She went along a path that seemed to
her girlish fancy ever so much more attractive
than the dull routine of home.
She took no heed to the warnings that
may have been addressed to her, and it
all ended as it has ended in thousands
of cases since, in misery, ruin, and unutterable
disgrace.
That is something that still happens today.
That not only happens in the world, that's
common in the world.
It happens in evangelical circles.
It even happens in evangelical churches where the
gospel is preached very strongly and powerfully.
And it even happens in churches where the
sovereign grace of God is proclaimed.
It is sad.
It was a case of a poor young
girl.
She was received well in Shechem.
In fact, the world always receives us well.
The world loves to have Christians around, so
long as we keep quiet about Christ.
They welcome us.
But once we begin to speak about Jesus
Christ, then things change.
The world crucified Christ.
The world is at enmity with Christ.
It is impossible for a true servant of
Jesus Christ to find a home in the
world.
If it hated him, it will hate us.
If we give Christ a place of testimony
for him, but if we clam up, if
we say nothing, if we do not make
our colors known and our stand plain and
clear, the world welcomes us.
Someone has said, what evil have I done
that yonder whirling speaks so well of me?
It's something for Christians to think about.
Now, I don't know, and the text does
not tell us why Dana wanted to be
in Shechem.
Was the society there something that attracted her?
Was it because of the men that were
there?
We are not told.
You know, it is possible for Christians who
are in evangelical churches to think like this.
They think, of course, about different matters.
It's possible even to come to a place
like the city of Dallas and say, incidentally,
this is not an attempt to have you
unite with Believer's Chapel.
As you well know, we do not have
a membership role, although we have membership.
It's always been interesting to me to see
the principles by which people unite with churches.
Some unite purely for social reasons.
Some even say, they dress well at that
particular church.
That's where I want to be.
Other men will say, it's there I want
to be because there are many business contacts
that I could make with nice people who
will help me.
Still others come and say, I'm interested in
a church in which my children may have
friends, or in which there may be fellowship,
meetings, dinners, concerts.
I'm interested in a church in which there's
a strong emphasis on music.
Very rarely have I ever heard anyone say
to me, I would like to know what
church follows the teaching of the Word of
God most closely.
That's the church I would like to become
a part of.
That's rather interesting to me because it would
seem to me that that would be the
basis upon which we would want to be
in a Christian fellowship.
And I know that if I had children,
I would think, my children are grown, I
do have children, but if I were in
the condition in which I had young children,
I would want to say, I would want
to be the kind of person who would
say, where is the Word of God proclaimed?
Where are the principles of the Word of
God followed insofar as we are able?
And then I wouldn't say to my children,
would you like to go there?
I'd say, that's where we're going.
And they would go.
That's the way you ought to choose a
church.
You should seek from the Word of God
to discover just exactly what the Word of
God says about a local church and seek
to be in as close conformity to that
as possible.
What others think and what your children think,
of all things, that's not really of great
significance.
That same principle is the principle that we
found here.
We often act on worldly principles.
Our decisions are made on worldly principles.
Donna probably was fascinated by the city of
Shechem.
She probably was fascinated by the males there.
She was at that age.
Shechem seduced her.
Perhaps it was rape.
The Bible does not make that very plain
because he took her home.
But one thing you can be sure about
as you look at this, you will notice
that the Scriptures say that he humbled her.
He defiled her.
And in that, you can see the stark
biblical view of unchastity.
The Bible has some very strong words to
say about unchastity.
And you can see, while this is not
a lecture on that particular doctrine here in
Genesis chapter 34, it's evident that that's the
attitude that Holy Scripture gives to unchastity.
It was the old, old story of, on
the one hand, a young man of rank,
wealth, unbraddled appetite, and on the other, beauty,
weakness, dallying with temptation.
Whose fault was it?
Well, of course, it was Shechem's fault.
And of course, it was Donna's fault.
But it was also Jacob's fault.
Jacob should never have been near that city.
He should have been in Bethel.
It's not surprising that that happened here.
And I would imagine that Jacob forever reproached
himself because of this.
And later on in the 49th chapter, he
speaks about Simeon and Levi and speaks about
the violent deed that was brought about by
virtue of this whole situation.
Well, let me very quickly run through the
remainder of the chapter.
One thing you can say that seems to
be true, in spite of the fact that
this was a seduction and perhaps a rape,
it also was a love story.
Because it's clear that Shechem was deeply attracted
to Donna.
He said that his soul clung to her.
He loved the girl.
He spoke to her heart, spoke tenderly to
her.
And he asked his father to get the
young girl for a wife for him.
And the result was that Hamor approached Jacob
and his sons and sought to get them
to intermarry with them.
He proposed intermarriage in order that the two
people might be united.
But of course, this was a crime against
the calling of Israel.
They were called to be separate from the
world.
They were selected out of the world.
They were given a holy calling and great
promises, and they were to be different.
For they had come to know the Lord
God.
That's incidentally the nature of the church of
Jesus Christ.
That is exactly what we are.
We are called out of the world.
We are in the world, but we are
not of the world.
We are not motivated by the world's values,
by the world's aims, by the world's goals.
We are not, our lives are not operated
according to the principles by which the world
operates.
We are of the Lord.
Our citizenship is in heaven.
We are different.
Now Shechem didn't understand that.
Hamor did not understand it as well.
And when they proposed intermarriage and unity, they
were proposing something that was a crime against
the calling of Israel as a nation.
Now when the sons of Jacob heard about
it, they were not so generous as Hamor
and Shechem.
And they realized that since they were in
the minority, the only way in which they
might get the best of this community by
which Jacob was camped was by deceit.
Now they were right on one thing.
They were right in believing that Israel should
not unite with the Shechemites.
And they were also right in condemning the
act of Shechem.
But of course they were wrong in the
way that they carried it out.
It is a case of two extremes.
And so after the offer of marriage and
union by Shechem's father and Shechem, they make
a counteroffer.
And their counteroffer is, and in this of
course they were wrong, for they took a
religious right and made it the means by
which they would ultimately murder the men of
that city.
They said, if you will be circumcised, all
of the males circumcised, then we will unite
with you.
We'll take your daughters for ourselves.
We'll live with you and we'll become one
people.
But if you will not listen to us
to be circumcised, then we will take our
daughter and go.
They were right, but they were also wrong.
One might ask at this point, how is
it possible for them to fool the Shechemites
so?
Perhaps it was for this reason.
Circumcision was not simply a Jewish practice or
an Israelitish practice.
It was also practiced among other peoples at
that time, and it signified that a person
had reached marriageable status.
And so consequently, the proposal of this to
the men of the city might well have
been understood as simply a cultural thing.
But at any rate, we do read that
they accepted the terms.
Shechem, very quickly.
We read in verse 18, now the words
seem reasonable to Hamor and Shechem, Hamor's son.
Of course they were reasonable to them, for
they were men who did not understand spiritual
things at all.
And the young man did not delay to
do the thing, because he was delighted with
Jacob's daughter.
And so he and his father then went
to the city gate and persuaded the men
of the city to have the males circumcised
in order that they might unite with the
Israelites and become one people.
It was a very human kind of thing.
And the covenantal sign of circumcision, marking them
out as the children of Abraham, is used
carnally in order to unite people who have
no real inner harmony at all.
And then follows the treachery of the sons
of Jacob.
This is a crime that Jacob never forgot.
And when he prophesied concerning the future of
the sons, he singled out Simeon and Levi
for special mention of the violence that they
committed upon this occasion.
We read in verse 25 and 26, now
it came about on the third day when
they were in pain.
Crudely performed circumcision could incapacitate a man.
And they evidently were incapacitated, all of the
males, and it was possible for the two
men, Simeon and Levi, to come into that
small village.
No doubt it was a small village, and
murder all of the men of the village.
And then the other brothers came also and
looted the city because they had defiled their
sister.
They took their flocks, their herds, their donkeys,
and that which was in the city and
that which is in the field.
They captured it all.
They looted all their wealth and all their
little ones and their wives, and everything that
was in their houses.
They made a total catastrophe of the city
of Shechem.
Jacob, all this time so far as the
record goes, has been silent.
He hasn't said a word.
Now he speaks.
And notice how he speaks.
It's very revealing.
He says, You've brought trouble on me.
You've made me odious among the inhabitants of
the land.
My men are few in number, and they'll
gather together against me and they'll attack me
and I will be destroyed, I and my
household.
What was his real motive in saying, You've
brought trouble on me.
You've made me odious among the inhabitants of
the land.
Was it because he felt that this would
be dishonoring to the Lord God?
No.
He's interested in himself.
Jacob has not recovered yet.
Did you notice the first person?
He says, You've brought trouble on me.
He said, My men are few in number.
They will gather together against me and attack
me and I shall be destroyed, I and
my household.
He doesn't say anything about the sin of
camping near the city of Shechem.
He doesn't say anything about the fact that
I'm to blame, perhaps, for what has happened.
He has no repentance so far as we
can tell, no regret, no remorse for what
has happened.
He has no sense even of God's promises
to him and how this action is a
contradiction of that.
But on the contrary, the only thing he
can speak about is Jacob.
Jacob, whose name has now become Israel, God's
fighter, is living like Jacob again.
No sense of the divine blessing and the
divine calling.
It's a sad fact but it's true that
people who live on the borderland of the
church and the world are never happy.
Do you know why?
Because the world attacks them and the church
does too.
In Great Britain, they have a part of
Great Britain that is called the borders.
The Scots speak of it as the borders
and the English speak of it as the
borders.
It's in the northern part of England where
Scotland and England touch.
Scotland and England have fought constantly.
There's only one good thing about the fights
over there and that is the southerners generally
defeated the Yankees.
The English have generally defeated the Scots.
But they call that the borders, down by
the border.
It's the border for the Scots, it's the
border for the English, it's the border country,
the borders.
They just use the term the borders.
And the people who live in the borders
are subject to the attacks of the English
and they are subject to the attacks of
the Scots.
They're on the way.
And so they've suffered through the years from
both north and south.
The man who has one foot in the
church of Jesus Christ and one foot in
the world can never be happy.
He is subject to attacks from the church
and from the world.
Now the sons of Jacob have the last
word.
Should he treat our sister as a harlot?
Now it might seem that that's an ideal
thing to say, but just remember this, that
Hamor and Shechem have agreed that what they
have done may be sealed by marriage and
furthermore they were willing to give the Israelites
anything that they ask.
And so what we have here is the
extreme, two extremes really, fearfulness on the part
of Jacob and fury on the part of
Jacob's sons.
Well let me say a few final words.
The major lesson of Genesis chapter 34, if
we were to try to sum it up,
is the peril of degeneration into worldliness and
the violent wrongs that occur as a result
of it.
Jacob, you see, as we said a moment
ago, has become Jacob again.
The Bible speaks of the world in several
different ways.
The Bible speaks of the world as, well,
of the physical world, planet earth we might
say.
The Bible also when it speaks of the
world speaks of the world of men.
They are called the world.
And then the Bible speaks of the world
in the sense of the spirit of the
age.
The world system and the things that dominate
it, the kinds of goals, the kinds of
values that the world possesses, that's called the
world.
And we are told not to love the
world.
And in that sense there is a great
deal of admonition in the word of God
against the world.
Listen to what John says in his first
epistle verse 15 and 16 of the second
chapter.
He says, do not love the world, not
the things in the world.
If anyone loves the world, the love of
the Father is not in him.
For all that is in the world, the
lust of the flesh and the lust of
the eyes and the boastful pride of life
is not from the Father, but is of
the world.
So what is the world like?
Well, the world is characterized by the lust
of the flesh, the lust of the eyes,
the pride of life.
Does that remind you of anything?
Well, I'm sure it reminds you of the
fall in the Garden of Eden.
For it was there that we read in
the third chapter, this very book of Genesis,
that when the woman saw that the tree
was good for food, the lust of the
flesh, and that it was a delight to
the eyes, the lust of the eyes, and
that the tree was desirable to make one
wise, the pride of life.
And as a result, she fell.
Now she had already fallen in heart, but
in the actual falling, she took of the
fruit and died.
Those three lusts are characteristic of the world.
The lust of the flesh, the lust of
the eyes, the pride of life.
Now, there's nothing wrong with desire.
Something that's just a desire may be our
servant, but a lust is a desire that
has become our master.
The lust of the flesh, means to be
dominated by your physical appetites.
Hunger, thirst, the need for sleep, the desire
for sex, or for physical exercise.
Obviously, physical appetites are wholesome, necessarily part of
us.
And generally, they're meant to be satisfied.
But we live in an age in which
eating and drinking and the great sexual experience
are presented to us as goals in themselves.
People bow down and worship them.
They don't eat to live, they live to
eat, or to copulate.
Instead of accepting food and the other blessings
of life as gifts of God, they make
the principal goal in their life often, the
pleasures of an Epicurean palate.
And if that's true, then you can say
that person is a worldly person.
C.S. Lewis, in one of his works,
points out, to lust for food does not
mean merely to overeat.
It can equally well manifest itself in the
spirit of the dilettante, who discriminates against any
food that offends the susceptibilities of his finely
tuned palate.
In the same way, any bodily appetite for
sleep, for physical recreation, yes, jogging.
Jogging.
That's right.
It can be lust of the flesh.
Or for sex becomes a bodily lust at
the point where to satisfy them interferes with
the, in the smallest degree, with serving and
glorifying Jesus Christ.
It is possible.
It is very possible.
In fact, it is likely to have happened
many times that the desire for physical recreation
for jogging is worldly.
Because there is no question but that in
the lives of some, it has interfered with
the place of Jesus Christ in the life
of the individual.
Often it's not recognized, but nevertheless it's sadly
true.
I was reading a book this week in
which there was an interesting story in it
because I know that it's so true to
life.
Speaking about the lust of the eyes, that
desire for things that are beautiful.
Oh, that means this morning I mentioned this
and someone came up to me and said,
Dr. Johnson, I agreed with everything you said
until you said this.
The lust of the eyes.
Beauty.
You can conceive of beauty in the terms
of a Maserati.
That's where he objected.
He said it with a smile on his
face because he didn't mean it.
He was joking, but nevertheless it is true.
It is possible for people to have such
a love for an automobile that it's a
sin.
A black tulip or an original Picasso.
There's nothing wrong with liking a beautiful automobile
or a beautiful picture or loving flowers, but
the passion to possess and hoard beauty can
become a lust that destroys the Christian living
of an individual.
This author went on to say that he
had lunch with a Chinese businessman not long
ago who was in his sixties.
This man had a beautiful house.
It was so beautiful he called it breathtakingly
beautiful.
A tree whose leaves were semi-precious stones
dominated the foyer.
They sat down in the dining room and
they ate with not silver, gold utensils.
He said his host revealed a profound knowledge
of biblical doctrine.
Do you know what his ambition was?
His ambition was to have enough money to
preach the gospel without being a burden to
anyone.
His spiritual activity at the time was nothing
and his heart was as dry as dust.
That was a worldly man.
That was a worldly man who actually used
his worldly activities in order to speak spiritually
about some spiritual goal that he had.
Now when we talk about worldliness, we're not
talking about separation from the world in the
sense of isolation.
Christians are not to be isolated from the
world.
They are in the world.
Now we are not of the world.
Our desires, our tastes, our goals, our values
are totally different if we follow scripture.
But we are in the world and we
are sent into the world for a specific
task of being a witness and a testimony
to the world.
So we're not talking about separation in the
sense of isolation.
We have to be identified with the world
in which we are.
But we are talking about separation from the
goals, from the values, from the kinds of
activities that dominate worldly living.
Monasteries and abbeys are monuments to ascetic isolation.
We are not suggesting that believers' chapels should
become a monastery or any kind of abbey,
of which there are too many in ruins
today.
But we are suggesting that there should be
something different about a Christian wherever he goes.
Now Jeremiah has an interesting word.
He says, Seekest thou great things for thyself?
Seek it not.
What's he talking about?
Well, he's talking about the pride of life.
Ambition.
What's wrong with ambition?
Please, Dr. Johnson, don't tell us there's anything
wrong with ambition.
Isn't it important that we excel?
Isn't it important that we really reach the
top of our profession?
As an insurance man, should I not be
the best insurance man that I possibly can
be?
As a lawyer, should not I have a
brilliant legal mind and the experience to go
with it, to be the kind of man
who stands out in his profession?
As a real estate man, should I not
be the best in the business, a doctor,
whatever it may be, even a preacher?
Should I not be the best preacher, the
finest teacher of the Word of God that
I can possibly be?
Ambition.
Surely there's nothing wrong with ambition.
You know where ambition comes from, by the
way?
It comes from the Latin word ambio, which
means to kind of move around, to walk
around.
It means, it refers to a circuitous method.
In fact, ambition is perfectly all right so
long it is ambition directed toward a specific
task that glorifies God, that is in the
interests of the Lord God.
But the endeavor to obtain some great thing
for personal advantage, ah, that's different.
If my ambition to be the finest insurance
man is for the glory of God and
not for the glory of Lewis Johnson, that
may be different.
And further, if it does not mean that
God does not have second place in my
life, but if it means that really what
I'm talking about is in order that I
might be known as the best lawyer or
the best doctor or the finest insurance man,
and if it also means that the Lord
God has second place in my life, then
ambition is not only wrong, it's deadly.
Deadly.
Deadly for you and deadly for your family
and deadly for your children sitting by you.
It's pride and self-exaltation under the good
name of ambition.
It's folly.
That's what it is.
It's folly.
It's folly because in the first place, what
you're aiming for is never really attained.
You say, well, if I can just, I
don't want to make a million.
I've got a friend who wants to make
a million.
I just want a half a million.
If I can just make a half a
million and have it all laid aside, that's
all I want.
Have you ever noticed men who want a
half a million?
There was a time when I wanted a
half a million.
In fact, I wanted more than that.
I wasn't satisfied with a half a million.
I wanted to be the best insurance man
and also the wealthiest.
But I've noticed this about us, us men.
When we get the half million, that's not
enough.
It's a million.
And when we get that, it's not enough.
In fact, it becomes a game.
It's kind of a test, you know, and
that's what makes it exciting.
It's not really the money we say.
It's the thrill of the activity.
It's the competition.
It's exciting.
And so we spend all of our activities.
In the meantime, the interests of the Lord
God are wasted.
And finally, the effects so touch us that
we cannot do the things that we ought
to do.
We cannot.
Our minds have become blinded.
Our wills have become rebellious and blunted and
dead.
And consequently, we cannot even change.
We chase the horizon and we think we've
caught it and there's another one.
We try to jump off our own shatter
and there it is with us.
Look at Alexander, one of the greatest illustrations
of this.
He conquered the whole world and he said,
got sat down and cried, there are no
more worlds to conquer.
You can never be satisfied.
You can never attain what you're seeking for.
And furthermore, if you did attain it, it
would ruin your soul.
Think of a man like Hitler, Napoleon Bonaparte.
Bonaparte started as a poor little Corsican boy,
simple-minded, simple goals.
The closer he came to doing what he
hoped to do, and that was to control
the world, the more of a madman he
became.
And Hitler, who cannot remember Hitler.
You see, the character of a man worsens
the more he obtains the things of this
world.
It's always true.
As a matter of fact, most men who
attain great wealth attain it accidentally.
They look back and say, I just happened
to be in the right place at the
right time.
It was the providence of God, really.
Another thing, if you've got some great ambition,
when you don't get it, there's great sorrow.
There's only one kind of aspiration that is
really worthwhile, and that's the aspiration the psalmist
speaks about in Psalm 42.
This is what he says about his own
ambition.
As the deer pants for the water brooks,
so my soul pants for thee, O God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living
God.
Goethe, a remarkable man, a man noted for
presence of mind, with an equable mind.
The kind of person that if you looked
at, though you knew if you were a
Christian he was not a Christian, an enemy
of Christianity and reality, he said when he
reached, I think, the age of 80, he
said, there has never been one moment in
my life when I have had repose.
Men don't have repose in seeking the things
of the world.
So the sinfulness of ambition.
Have you heard people talk about holy ambition?
That's like talking about holy adultery.
Ambition in which the aim is to build
up myself is not holy, it's unholy.
There's no such thing as holy ambition in
that sense.
There's no such thing as holy pride.
Oh, the blessedness of those that are free
from the selfishness that characterizes a great deal
of what is called ambition.
May God give us the ambition to possess
the one thing that is worthwhile, and that's
the Lord God.
As the heart pants after the water brooks,
so my soul pants for thee, O God.
Give me that ambition.
Give me that gold.
And I'll be happy.
And not only will I be happy, but
my children will be happy too.
And the chances are that my grandchildren will
also be affected by it.
So my dear Christian friends in Believers Chapel,
let me as an ambassador of the Lord
Jesus Christ warn and admonish you in the
sense of Scripture.
Those children sitting by your side, under your
care, their lives are often ultimately dependent upon
your own attitude to the things of the
Lord God.
May He deliver you from worldliness, the lust
of the flesh, the lust of the eyes,
and the pride of life.
And may you give yourself to seeking the
face of the Lord God.
If you're here and you have never believed
in Jesus Christ, well, your first responsibility is
to look after the cross where the blood
was shed that you may have the forgiveness
of sins and have the assurance of everlasting
life.
Come to Christ.
Put your trust in Him.
Turn to Him who shed His blood that
sinners might live and be delivered from the
sins of the flesh, of the eyes, the
pride of life, worldliness.
May God speak to your heart.
Shall we stand for the benediction?
Father, we are grateful to Thee for the
words of admonition that come to each of
us, parents and children, from Holy Scripture.
Deliver us, Lord, from worldliness.
Deliver us from isolation.
Enable us to move in the world as
genuine lights whose holy ambition is for the
face and the possession of our great God
who loved us and gave the Son of
God as a sacrifice for sinners.
How wonderful it is, Lord, to belong to
the family of God.
And if there are some here who do
not, O God, work in their hearts, draw
them to Jesus Christ and the atoning sacrifice.
May the grace and mercy and peace of
our triune God go with us for Jesus'
sake.
Amen.