“Let your fountain by blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth, a lovely deer, a graceful doe. Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight; be intoxicated always in her love. Why should you be intoxicated, my son, with a forbidden woman and embrace the bosom of an adulteress? For a man’s ways are before the eyes of the Lord, and He ponders all his paths.” Proverbs 18-21
In baseball a perfect game is rare. That’s when a pitcher doesn’t give up any runs, hits, or walks in a game. He records 27 outs over nine innings without a single batter reaching base. When it happens, lo and behold, his team rushes to him to celebrate. The fielders crowd him, the players on the bench race to him. The bullpen empties. Everyone celebrates there in the middle of the field. Joy is all around.
In all of baseball history, as rare as they are, only one pitcher, Don Larsen of the Yankees, pitched a perfect game in a World Series. As far as it goes in such things, this was a good as it gets. I want you to consider those celebrations – the intensity of them and the unadulterated joy gushing forth from grown men, jumping up and down like giddy children. Or, if you prefer, think of any other sport championship. Think of Michael Jordan clutching the NBA’s top trophy, hugging it to his chest, weeping over it. All that discipline and sacrifice. All that effort toward the goal of victory – and then that incredible outpouring of relief, amazement, satisfaction and supreme happiness.
Now imagine the scene in the Kingdom! Imagine that Day when you see the Lord face to face. Imagine the saints that have run the race before you rushing out to celebrate with you and you jump up and down in the presence of the Lord, because of the Lord, through the Lord and for Him. He’s the One who pitched the perfect life for us. He’s the reason, the goal, and the end of it all. This is your destiny, Christian. This is your life. We strive and live for that moment that won’t go away like those perfect games and titles did. It’s an eternity we move toward.
Don’t be embarrassed and certainly don’t make little of the joys that await us in the age to come through faith in Christ.
It’s okay…the Apostle Paul references the crowing moments of the Games often, specifically in 1 Corinthians 9:24-27.
You see, this is what’s missing from our perspective in our battle with sin. The mind of the world is in the church because the spirit of pacifism is in our pulpits. We have preachers afraid to speak of sin because they don’t want to talk about judgment. They’re more afraid of offending sinners than they are of offending God. We’re shocked by the Lord’s warning of wrath because we aren’t shocked by the ugliness that is sin. But more than this, it means that we don’t know true joy, nor set our minds on it.
God has made provisions for us in all things. If one sparrow doesn’t fall to the ground without His knowledge, how much more does He watch over you, O Christian? He ponders all our thoughts and deeds, yes…and this is both a fearsome and wonderful thing. In Christ, through faith alone, it’s an inestimable beauty because the One who died for us is the One who ponders our every moment. In our struggle against sin, especially sexual sin, we neglect the beauties of this reality. Our minds become set on the flesh instead of the things of the Spirit and that certain victory over death and sin that’s ours in Christ.
Many married men have come to me and confessed addictions to pornography. The grip of it is greatly vexing to them and they desire deliverance. The trouble is that they’ve been conditioned by the world and the flesh rather than by the Word. Paul says of the enemies of the cross, “Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with their minds set on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like His glorious body, by the power that enables Him even to subject all things to Himself. (Philippians 3:19-21).” This is that from which we’ve escaped. Will we return to it. Will we dissipate our spiritual energies and joys by enslavement to those things over which we’re ashamed? Are we dogs or are we men of Christ, champions in the Lord? Are we more than conquerors or cowards of the flesh?
Can we imagine a pitcher in that last inning of a game, no one has been on base. That temporal perfection is before him and the crowd is hushed in reverent awe over the rare feat they’re witnessing…hoping for it to be accomplished. All eyes are on him. Imagine that’s you. But then, right before that last inning, instead of heading from the dugout to the mound you go down the tunnel into the locker room and break out a bottle of booze. The inning is about to start and they come for you. When they find you you’re drunk, unfit for the game.
Or imagine, Michael Jordan before the final game, maybe the night before, leaving himself unable to play because of drugs, booze and women. It would be a terrible insanity, wouldn’t it? Well, this is modern Christianity. As C.S. Lewis said, we’re like children making mud-pies in a slum because we can’t imagine a vacation at sea.
What beauties there are in Christ! What excellency! And we are temples of the Holy Spirit, given to us through faith. No, we can’t be lost once we’re His but we can crawl into the gutter and drag His name and our faith through the filth. Sexual sin does this to us and it’s because our minds are set on that thing – sex – like we’re dogs because we aren’t fixing our thoughts on Him and the excellent things of life through Him and to Him and for Him. Christ is love. Sex isn’t love. It can be an expression of it only in the context that God has provided – a holy marriage, dedicated to Him. The body is for the Lord and He made it and sex. So we rejoice in the wife of our youth, as the Proverb says. The poetry of the verse reminds us that God is a God of beauty and infinite perfections.
So we strive to honor Him who sees and knows all things. And we discipline ourselves for that goal, which is to honor Him always because we know that it is good because He is good. Like those players who bring themselves to excellence for a perishable crown, we strive for the imperishable one! We aren’t told to _sacrifice _for Him. That’s preposterous. What can we give up for Him that would be, in the end, a higher good than He Himself? No. We’re told to set our minds on the things of the Spirit, to renew our minds and live a life of worship, joy and peace in gratitude toward Him always for the salvation that’s through grace alone.
Once we see the falsehood of sexual sin, the abomination of it, and the counterfeiting of joy in it – the fact that it brings us low, so low – then we see the beauties of holiness too. Christianity isn’t simply against sin – it’s for the perfection that is the Lord Jesus Christ.
Recent Comments