Years ago, Dallas Willard wrote a profound book called The Spirit of the Disciplines. He points out that there is almost a universal belief that it is immensely difficult to be a real Christian. People constantly emphasize the vast, grim costs of discipleship. But he asks us to consider the costs of non-discipleship. What does it cost the person who chooses to be ungodly? What price is paid for living without Christ?
Willard reminds us that it costs just as much or even more to go to hell than to come to heaven. In the end, the ungodly pay the biggest price. He says, "To depart from righteousness is to choose a life of crushing burdens, failures and disappointments, a life caught in the toils of endless problems that are never resolved. Here is the source of that unending soap opera, that sometimes horror show known as normal human life. The cost of discipleship, though it may take all we have, is small when compared to the lot of those who don’t accept Christ’s invitation to be a part of his company in the way of life."
How would you characterize your life?
I wonder how you would best characterize your life this morning? Are you living a life of discipleship, seeking to be like Jesus in every way? Or are you living a life of non-discipleship, living every day however you please? Is your life like a soap opera, full of crushing burdens, failures, and disappointments? Are you caught up in a never-ending cycle of unresolved problems? Or is your life full of joy and strength? Assurance? Hope?
By now most of us have carefully weighed the costs of discipleship. But this morning I want us to carefully weigh the costs of non-discipleship. It is important that we remind ourselves of what we stepped away from. Proverbs 13:15 (NIV) says, "...the way of the unfaithful is hard."
We might liken the plight of the ungodly to life on a slippery slope. When I was in grade school, my mom had bought me a brand new pair of Nike tennis shoes. I was so proud. Their white leather glistened in the light. But it was summertime. And my mom had spoken prophetic truth, "Don’t wear these shoes down to the creek. You’ll get them muddy and ruin them." But I knew so much more than my mother. You know how that is! Within days I was down at Horse Creek horsing around near the bank with my brothers.
I can’t remember exactly how it happened, but near the edge of a steep bank overlooking Horse Creek I lost my footing. The dirt beneath my feet caved in. I did all I could to grab a bundle of weeds to keep myself from sliding down the bank but as I clinched the weeds, they began breaking, one stem at a time. The more I kicked and yelled and tried to climb up the slope, the worse my situation became! The dirt was so loose beneath my feet that I couldn’t get any footing.
Finally I noticed a mound of dirt down near the water’s edge. I thought to myself, "If I could slide down a little further, perhaps I could stand on that mound while my brothers get a rope or something." And so I slid the rest of the way down the bank. And sure enough, according to the prophetic words of my mother, when my feet hit that mound my glistening white tennis shoes immediately sunk into a foot of thick, black, silvery mud. I began the school year with disgusting, stinky tennis shoes like everyone else.
With ungodliness there is a gradual progression of events that take us down the slope to the water’s edge. We don’t just make a decision one day and slip. Instead, there is a gradual hardening that takes place in a person’s life that leads him further and further away from God and into deepening hardship and pain. Some people are up to their necks in mud. Some people are grasping for whatever help they can. Some are on the slide. Some are flirting with the water’s edge.
What matters most is that we become aware of the slippery slope and step off it. To step off the slope of ungodliness means stepping away from three things.
Stepping away from ignorance.
Last Sunday we began talking about the mindset of the ungodly. The ungodly consciously deny the most obvious truth of God existence. It's not that they don’t believe, which is atheism, or can’t believe, which is agnosticism, but that they won’t believe in God. The ungodly consciously suppress the truth of God. But why do the ungodly suppress the truth of God’s existence? Why won’t they see God’s handwriting all over creation?
In Romans 1:18 (NIV) Paul explains. The ungodly, "...suppress the truth by their wickedness." Wickedness and the truth of God are diametrically opposed to each other! Wickedness is the absence of all that God is. By its very nature, wickedness suppresses the truth. For wickedness to become greater, God must become less. For the darkness to advance, even the slightest light must be expelled.
In John 3:19-20 (NIV) Jesus explains, "This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed."
When men choose evil, they naturally desire the cover of darkness. They don’t want to be discovered. They don’t want to be defined by the light. They don’t want to be exposed by the holiness of God. Instead, like Adam and Eve, they want to hide from God. They want to forget his admonitions about life and his warnings about sin. Do you ever find it curious how this truth plays itself out in our lives? When Adam and Eve first sinned, they found it necessary to hide from God. Whenever we sin, one of the first things we do is withdraw from God. We find it difficult to pray. Any excuse in the world gets us out of church. We shrink back from telling others about Jesus. We can’t sing. Communion is empty. Our Bible is forgotten. And we drift. And the truth is silent on our lips. Is this a coincidence? I don’t think so. Colossians 1:21 (NIV) says, "Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior."
Sinful behavior puts enmity between us and God. Sin causes us to become hostile to the truth of God. Sin makes us doubt. It makes us question. It makes us antagonistic. It feeds atheism, agnosticism, unbelief, and rebellion. Sin corrupts the mind. It blinds our intellect. It deceives our hearts. It causes us to believe the unthinkable and do the unspeakable. Wherever the truth of God’s existence is suppressed, sin thrives unbridled.
There is a very noticeable and progressive intellectual slide in Romans 1:18-32. We have just spoken at length about the first step. In their sin, men begin suppressing the truth of God’s existence. God becomes lesser and lesser in their lives until he is no longer thought of. But the next progression is that men reject the truth of God’s existence out of hand and make their own truth. They refashion God after their own image. They declare all religion and truth about God null and void. They declare, "We can’t know God exists, so why bother? Let’s invent God instead."
Romans 1:21-23 (NIV) says, "For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles."
After rejecting the truth, they progress and actively turn the truth of God into a lie. They opt for more naturalistic explanations of life. They idolize creation. They seek meaning and purpose only in this life. Romans 1:25 (NIV) says, "They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator— who is forever praised. Amen." But most devastating is when the ungodly become like animals and beasts in their thinking. Animals have no awareness of decency, of morality, of ethics, of consequence, of God, and so on. They live exclusively for the moment. They don’t reason out their behaviors and posture in life.
As the ungodly mind drifts deeper into ignorance, hardship ensues. Let me be specific about the hardships I am talking about. When we stepped away from ungodliness, we stepped away from ignorance of God. But we also stepped away from indulgence.
Stepping away from indulgence.
When a person expels God from her life, she is expelling the one thing that can truly and completely satisfy. And so with the truth of God’s existence suppressed, the ungodly person seeks to fill an enormous void. Where does she find meaning? Where does she find contentment? Where does she find hope? Joy? Strength? Morality? Truth?
If there is no God, then all of these things can only be found in this life. And so the ungodly person begins a futile search for fullness. He pours his life into his career and he becomes a workaholic thinking that his work will truly satisfy him. But in the end, his tired body aches from stress and exertion. He pours his life into his family and he becomes the consummate family man thinking, "This is what it's all about. I need to give my best to my kids. I need to be there. I need to be a good husband." But still something is missing.
He looks to wealth. He looks to materialism saying, "Maybe if I buy that house or that car, or move into that subdivision, or wear a specific a specific brand of clothing, or have so much money, or get that collector's item, or that tool. Perhaps I need to buy something to feel complete." He next looks within. "Maybe I need to discover something about myself, to unlock some secret from my past. Maybe it is just my circumstance. Maybe the people around me just aren’t giving me what I need. Maybe I need to make a change. I think I’ll move. I think I’ll pursue that forbidden relationship. I think I’ll get a makeover."
On and on this progresses until the ungodly person reaches rock bottom. He realizes that life is slipping away, that his energy is fading, and that he has found very little satisfaction in life. And at this point he perhaps takes things to a whole new level. He desperately indulges the flesh, looking for fullness. He eats. He drinks. He carouses. He lusts. He crosses ethical lines. He dismisses God’s law. He lives for the moment. He lets loose morally. Sexual immorality. There are no boundaries left.
The Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes captures the essence of ungodly person's struggle. The author begins in Ecclesiastes 1:2-4 (NIV), " 'Meaningless! Meaningless!' says the Teacher. 'Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless. 'What does man gain from all his labor at which he toils under the sun? Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever."
And Ecclesiastes 1:8-9 (NIV) continues, "All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing. What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun."
The author of Ecclesiastes goes on to say that he devoted himself to study, to testing every pleasure, and to undertaking great projects. He planted vineyards and denied himself nothing his eyes desired. He did not refuse himself any pleasure. He devoted himself to riches, to advancement, to toil, and to friendliness.
The teacher left no stone unturned. When he erased all thought of God, everything became meaningless. If you want to get depressed, read Ecclesiastes. This empty search for satisfaction propels the ungodly person to new lows. And with every turn, God releases the ungodly to the power of their sinful desires.
Romans 1:24-25 (NIV) says, "Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator— who is forever praised. Amen."
Romans 1:26-27 (NIV) continues, "Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion."
When sin unleashes its power in the life of ungodly, there is no stopping point. Men and women will degrade their own bodies for pleasure. They will pursue unspeakable desires. Homosexuality. Bisexuality. Adultery. Molestation. Child exploitation. Rape. Incest. Prostitution. Promiscuity. They will risk disease and death for a night of pleasure. They will risk incarceration. They will destroy their future. They will endure shame, guilt, financial loss, broken families, and unemployment. They will get drunk and puke over themselves. They will wreck their minds with drugs. They will destroy their bodies with needles and promiscuity. The ugliest sin emerges out of the aftermath of a person denying the truth of God. But it’s a progression It starts out as a snowball, but rolls into an avalanche.
Where does it stop? Where is such ungodliness put into check? When we stepped off the slippery slope, we stepped away from the ignorance that leads to progressive, meaningless self-indulgence.
Stepping away from impenitence.
Once the truth has been suppressed and the pattern of indulgence sets in, the ungodly person becomes hardened and unrepentant. Romans 1:28-32 (NIV) says, "Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them."
Wouldn’t you just love to spend the rest of the day with me dissecting every word and phrase that just spewed out of Paul’s mouth? Parents, I see a lot of Romans 1 in our children today. I see an awful lot of children growing up without Jesus Christ, not knowing God. Romans 1 is just as much a description of our MTV-style youth culture as it is an apt description of ungodliness. When children aren’t brought up knowing how to love Christ by your example, guess what? You open them up to every form of evil listed in Romans 1. When you allow, even encourage, everything else in their life to become more important than their relationship with Jesus Christ, they begin a slow slide down the slope of ungodliness.
What is so terrifying about Romans 1 is that it isn’t describing basically nice people occasional doing evil behavior. By the end of the chapter it is describing people who have become so evil that wickedness is their very identity. They're God-haters. They're greedy. They're senseless. They're arrogant. They're gossips. They are so hardened that they have actually become promoters of evil rather than righteousness. "Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them."
What kind of world would we live in if such ungodliness reigned supreme? If people were just allowed to slide down the slippery slope of ungodliness? If we didn’t reach out to the world and make a difference? What kind of person would you be today if you had you never been saved from the power of sin? I often stay up at night asking myself that question. So many of my neighborhood friends have slipped to the deepest depths of wickedness. God’s grace makes all the difference. In Jesus Christ, God rescued us from the slippery slope. He died for our sins and he brought us back to God. And now through fellowship with God, sin is being driven out of our lives one day at a time.
What begins with the death of truth and continues on the slippery slope doesn’t have to follow us our whole life. That is the good news! Christ is bigger than ungodliness. He is bigger than our sin and failures. God can become greater. The truth can shine brighter than ever. And the darkness can be expelled in any life, in whosoever wills.
But we're not done discussing ungodliness. Next week I want to follow up this week's message by exploring the ultimate consequences of the life we choose. And then after that, we are going to talk in detail about the intervention of God on our behalf to save us from the death grip of sin. Let’s pray together.