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April 6, 2008
No More Empty Living
a sermon on 1 Peter 1.17-25
by David C.
Mauldin
Westminster Presbyterian Church, Mobile, Alabama What would it take to
make you happy? Would a million dollars do it? What about fame? Suppose you
could be adored by legions of fans, like a rock star, or held in high esteem for
your contribution to the arts or sciences. Would that make you happy? How about
love? Romantic love or family love, take your pick—take both. What if you had it
all? Would you be fulfilled as a human being then? I wonder. I do wonder. Why do
the people who have everything end up so miserable so much of the time?
Celebrities, athletes, people who have it all—and are they happy? Many
apparently are not. Tabloids constantly run stories about celebrities in alcohol
or drug rehab. Or some big movie star gets arrested for stealing purses. Or yet
another Hollywood marriage ends in divorce. Or someone overdoses; someone else
has her children taken away. We’ve read in the local paper recently about former
NFL star Keith McCants getting arrested. That’s a long fall from fame and
fortune. I like comic strips, and enjoyed reading the biography of Charles
Schultz, creator of Peanuts. I marveled at how profoundly unhappy he was. He
revolutionized the comic page. He created a media and marketing empire. At the
height of his career he far surpassed any other artist in every way—from sales
to awards; he was one of the richest entertainers in the country. Yet he was
profoundly insecure. His story begins with a young man determined to prove
himself. He’s going to make it big and show all those people who never believed
in him. And then he does. He succeeds literally beyond his wildest dreams. But
success failed to deliver the peace and well-being he expected. You might say,
“Well, celebrities are just people like everyone else.” A lot of people are
unhappy. Many people have trouble running their own lives. And that’s my point.
Reaching the top and having everything you want doesn’t necessarily make one
happy. In fact, it may be just the opposite. A person rises from obscurity and
poverty to the very top, expecting that success and wealth will make her happy.
That it will relieve the gnawing insecurities. But it doesn’t. As long as her
dreams were unfulfilled, she could keep herself going by thinking, “Just over
that next hill, I’ll reach my goal, and then I’ll be fulfilled.” What happens
when you reach your goal and you are still the same person with the same fears,
doubts, and issues? That’s far worse. Christianity leads us to expect precisely
this problem. It says that because we were created for relationship with God, we
have a need for God. Think of it as a God-shaped hole in our souls. If it is not
filled with God, we will fill it with other things. But of course, nothing less
than God can ever provide lasting fulfillment. Nothing else works, and whatever
we stuff in there in place
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of God becomes an enslaving idol. At root, all sin is idolatry. Sin is trying to
find your worth, your fulfillment, your reason for existence in something other
than God. These idols need not be bad in themselves. Most often they are good
and wonderful gifts from our loving heavenly Father, that we take and misuse by
elevating them above God. You can do this, for example with love and family
life. You build your identity and justify your existence around your spouse or
kids. The problem is, they are finite human beings. What happens when they prove
less than perfect? Imagine the greatest husband who ever lived. His wife is
certainly blessed, but even he cannot be everything to her. He can be a good
husband, but not the reason for her existence. You can even do this with
religion. You can make it an idol. You do all the right things; you enjoy them.
But your heart is far from God. You hope to find fulfillment, to make your life
meaningful, by doing religious things, instead of simply accepting God’s grace.
Timothy Keller in his book The Reason for God outlines how our idols isolate us
and draw us into sin. He writes: If our highest goal in life is the good of our
family, then … we will tend to care less for other families. If the highest goal
is the good of our nation, tribe, or race, then we will tend to be racist or
nationalistic. If our ultimate goal in life is our own individual happiness,
then we will put our own … interests ahead of those of others. … If we get our
very identity, our sense of worth, from our political position, then politics is
not really about politics, it is about us. … That means we must demonize the
opposition. If we get our identity from our ethnicity or socioeconomic status,
then we have to feel superior to those of other classes and races. If you are
profoundly proud of being an open-minded, tolerant soul, you will be extremely
indignant toward people you think are bigots. If you are a very moral person,
you will feel very superior to people you think are licentious. [p. 168-9]
Whatever you love above all else is what gives you your identity. Your highest
love makes you who you are. If this is not God, it is an idol. No matter what it
is, no matter how good or beautiful it may be, ultimately it will leave you
empty. One line from our scripture reading has captured my mind. This is another
passage from the letter we call 1 Peter. It is about how we live. God has raised
Jesus from the dead. Because he has, a certain way of living makes sense. The
passage explains how this works, but as it does so, we find this line, in verse
18: “You were set free from the worthless/futile/empty way of life handed down
from your ancestors.” I’m rendering that from the Greek. The first word could be
translated “set free” or “liberated” or “ransomed.” The idea comes from the
slave market. Your freedom has been bought. You were a slave, but now you are
free. The second key word is just one word, but I gave a range of its meaning:
worthless, futile, empty. This line struck me hard, and I am not entirely sure
why. I think it surprised me. I might have expected it to say, “You used to do a
lot of bad things, but now you shouldn’t do them anymore.” People think that’s
the message of Christianity, right? Don’t do those things we call bad; do these
good things instead. But … that’s not what this says. First of all it talks not
about whether your actions are good or bad but whether you are a slave or free.
Then, it doesn’t talk about
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specific actions, but rather about one’s whole lifestyle. Then, it doesn’t
complain that the old way of life was wicked. Instead, it calls it empty …
futile … worthless. Before these people knew Christ, they were trapped in an
empty existence. Maybe they realized this; then again, maybe not. Sometimes it
is only from the perspective of wholeness that we fully realize the extent of
our brokenness. Only after you know Jesus Christ can you look back and see what
you were missing all along and never knew it. The apostle Paul is a classic
example of this. While he was a Pharisee, he felt pretty good about himself.
Once he met Jesus, however, and discovered what he was missing, he came to
recognize the emptiness of his life before. And of course, Paul was one of those
religious types. I like him because he is proof that God loves religious types
too. Sometimes he has to do a little extra work on us, but he is willing to
forgive our pride and the ridiculous way we think he needs us. Anyway, Paul
invested his self-worth and identity in religion, and it turned him into a
monster. As a self-consciously devout Jew, the one thing he could not stand was
apostate Jews. They were worse than Romans, by far. So he persecuted those he
considered heretics, namely the Christians. Paul never knew, until Jesus knocked
him down and blinded him with light—literally—how far he was from God.
Sometimes, however, people do recognize the emptiness. Someone commented about
Charles Schultz, quite insightfully I think, that he suffered because he was an
artist. He had the sensitive soul of an artist. The genius that made him great
came at a price. Often it is the artists, the poets, and the writers who have
the moral vision to see past all the stuff and busy-ness to the hollow core of
human existence. If you want to know where a society is headed, look to its
poets and artists. They are generally ahead of the curve. For two or three
generations now artists and poets in the Western world have portrayed a lack of
meaning. They picture the emptiness of human existence. And life feels empty to
modern people because our culture has given up on God. What if our biggest
problem is not that we are wicked, but that we have lost our way, and our
wickedness is a by-product of our condition? That condition being we have an
insatiable appetite for significance—and you could talk about this a lot of
ways: You could say we need fulfillment. You could say we want our lives to
matter. Or you could simply say we want to be loved. We have this insatiable
appetite for all that, but no matter how hard we try, no matter where we look,
lasting fulfillment eludes us. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, we discover that
we are loved—infinitely. Our freedom was bought for us, not with something
valuable but finite, like gold or silver, but rather with something of infinite
worth, the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without defect or
blemish. That changes everything. Think about this … really try to get your mind
around it … because it is the basis for your whole way of life as a Christian.
It can make the difference between faithfulness or failure, between doing good
things out of obligation until you burn out or realizing the joy God wants for
you. You have been bought with a price. Set free! Life doesn’t have to be empty.
It isn’t empty anymore. Why? Because Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, loved
you so much that he gave up his power and glory and privilege; he became human;
he died on a cross, suffering the punishment you deserved; and then, God the
Father raised him from the dead by the power of the
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Spirit; and he lives and reigns eternally; and … he offers life, abundant and
eternal to all who trust him enough to give themselves completely to him. You
are loved. You are loved with an infinite love. This is grace. God comes to us
and gives us what we could never find or achieve. Our existence is grounded in
him. We are born anew by the powerful, enduring Word of God. When that happens,
you cannot be the same. You come to recognize what is worthy and what is empty.
This grace becomes the basis for a new manner of life. What does it look like?
Our passage talks about living in reverent fear of God. It also suggests that
having obeyed the truth and given our lives to Jesus Christ, we ought to love
one another eagerly, without ceasing. As long as we think of ourselves first
(and I realize how hard it is not to do that), even as Christians, we will miss
the joy and fulfillment God desires us to have. When we follow the example of
Jesus, and give ourselves to him, give ourselves in service to others, we will
discover life is not empty at all. So let us put aside our pettiness, our
insecurities, all those nasty little things that prevent us from really loving
one another deeply. Let’s live holy lives, not in order to impress anybody
(especially not God), but just because we love our heavenly Father and want to
be like him. Above all, cling to his grace. Find you worth, your meaning, your
fulfillment there. Let him justify your existence. After all he created you …
and he set you free … not with perishable things, but with the precious blood of
Jesus. You are loved, infinitely, by your Creator. And if that doesn’t make you
happy … nothing will! Amen. rev_mauldin@yahoo.com
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