Freedom from Vanity 1974

Colossians chapter 3, verses 3 and 4, Colossians 3, 3 and 4. For you have died, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. When Christ, who is our life, appears, then we will appear with him in glory.

But until then, our lives are hid with Christ in God. And only when our lives are so hid, covered, so that eyes of flesh can walk right by us and not see the glory of God, only then is God's power safe in our hands. Now the problem is, not too many of us want to pay the price of living a life that is hid with Christ in God.

See, we want to be seen, and loved, and admired by the eyes of men. And this is why, time and time and time again, we barely get started as ministers of God and we burn out. I'll never forget one day when I was a very small child.

Some big kids in the neighborhood came down the street pushing a motorcycle they must have found in a junkyard or alley picking. There wasn't a speck of paint left on it. And we all stood around and watched as the big guys were working on this thing, trying to get it to go.

And after a long time came the big moment, they were going to start it. And for a few seconds, it sounded like it might really be a motorcycle, you know, and then it just petered out. And I don't know how many times they tried to get that thing to go.

It would bang and pop and make some noises, and then it would quit. And they jumped on it, and they pushed it, and they rode it down the hill. But no way could they get that thing to keep going.

They couldn't get that thing to work. And to this day, we don't know what it was that kept that from running the way it should. But one thing is for sure, we know, there's no doubt in our minds, what it is that causes believers to do just that, to get started and then burn out, started and burn out.

Who knows how many times? Always, always underneath is our vanity. We start bearing a little fruit for the kingdom of God. We pray for somebody who's sick, or we manage to speak just the right word at the right time to somebody who's hungry for the kingdom, and we see God touch that life, and we see that soul come into the kingdom, and right away, we want it to be known that God did that thing through us.

And when vanity gets hold of our hearts like that, our effectiveness as servants of God is gone. Our fellowship begins to grow. Naturally, we're pleased.

But it's not very long before we're tempted to be so caught up in the progress of our fellowship that we forget about that lost soul who needs to be found, or this wounded, broken soul who needs some attention, some care. And after a while, we're going through the motions, the religious motions, and everything looks all right on the surface. We're saying the right words, but that healing touch is no longer present.

See, now, it's not just the big time religious celebrities who fall into that trap. You know, we see some big time Christian charlatan who has himself billed as God's man for the hour, and we say to ourselves, man, where does a guy get the nerve to be so gross? Now, doesn't he know he's going to have to stand before a holy God and give an account for him, for the lies that he's pulling? And doesn't he realize he's living right now before God? And all the time we're looking down our noses at that man, we're doing exactly the same thing in our own little circle. We're acting like St. Francis of Assisi before the eyes of men instead of God, and we're grieving the spirit.

Why is it, you know, that every victory, every sign of progress, every beautiful star, every glorious miracle has to go to our head? See, is there no deliverance from this disease? We know very well from our Lord's teaching that lesson number one, if we want to follow him, is that vanity has to go. There is absolutely no way that we can follow Jesus Christ and keep our vanity. Blessed are the poor in spirit, theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Unless you turn and become as a little child, you shall in no wise enter the kingdom. He who humbles himself will be exalted, and he who exalts himself will be abased. And we say, how do you do it? What good is it going to do for us to make the resolution again, I'm going to be humble? We can come down off our pedestal this morning, by tomorrow night we're right back up there again.

One little whiff of success and we're off on another ego trip, one small defeat and we pick up our toys and we want to quit. But there is a way out of this, and we see it as we watch our Lord going down into Jerusalem on that donkey. No man ever, not even King David, received a welcome into Jerusalem like Jesus got that day.

Coats spread in the way of that donkey, people shouting, children singing, palm branches waving, it was just a foretaste of his coming glory. And Jesus goes through all that without even being slightly touched by vanity, goes right through all that acclaim without having any distraction, without being turned to the left or to the right. And the reason he can do that is that he knows that he is on his way to death.

He sees the cross at the end of the road and keeping his eye on that cross, he is able to withstand temptations that you and I can't begin to imagine. He knows that the only reason he is here is to die, not to be a smashing success, not to establish himself as a great healer, not to be the greatest teacher that ever lived, but to be the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And so they can shout Hosanna all they like.

They can praise him and they can blame him and they can hate him and they can slander him and they can spit on him and they can whip him and they can mock him. It doesn't make any difference. He knows exactly what he's here to do.

And this is going to have to be done if one human being on this earth is ever to be saved from wrath. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. See, but is that cross only for him? See, what makes us think that we can follow Jesus, the teacher, and follow Jesus, the great healer, and follow Jesus, the hero on Palm Sunday.

And then when we see him becoming the lamb of God dying for the sins of the world, hold back and take another road. Don't we understand that the power that moves through those hands as he heals and anoints him as he teaches and envelops him as he rides that donkey into Jerusalem, that power is the power of his approaching death. And until we accept that with our hearts and put ourselves under that power, we will be forever, and I mean forever, slaves of our own vanity.

You are dead. Your life is hid with Christ in God. We need to know, and we ought to know by this time, that the starting point of our lives of following Jesus is his cross.

This is where the vanity has to die right off. We say so glibly, Jesus died for our sins, and we go around telling everybody, Jesus died for our sins. What does it mean to say that Jesus died for our sins? Jesus died for our sins.

He didn't just die for the gross sins of murder and adultery and filth and debauchery and drunkenness and lies. He died for them indeed, but he also died and especially died for this delicate sin of our vanity and pride. He took that vanity of ours down into the ground with him.

He took it out of this world with him. He died for it. He atoned for it.

Well, if this happened, you say, how come it's still hanging us up? You know, why is this stuff still cursing our lives? Why aren't we free from it? Why are we still hungry for glory? And don't be looking at somebody else. Look at yourself. The reason is we haven't taken our vanity to the cross.

We haven't dumped that there. You know, you took your wicked life in the past. You took that to the cross and you laid it before the Lord and he cleansed you from it.

He took it away from you. He gave you a new start. But you never took your vanity, your pride, your ego to the cross and put it under that fountain of blood and held it down there until it was drowned to death.

The cross of Christ is our starting point. And we ought to know by now that just as surely as his cross is the beginning of our lives, as followers of Jesus, we have a destination in this world. And the destination is not his cross, but our cross.

If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me. Now, what do you think you're going to do with this cross that you pick up every morning and carry behind your Lord? And if you don't, you better start or you're not even serious with Jesus. What are you going to do with that cross? You're going to hang it up in your room for a decoration? My friend, you're going to die on that cross.

That I may know him in the fellowship of his sufferings and be made like him in his death. Which means that the goal of our lives, if we're serious about Jesus Christ, is not greater and greater success. Not more and more acclaimed in the minds of our Christian friends.

The goal of our life in this world of flesh and blood is a death that is in some way to be like our Lord's. A life that is poured out. A life that is given up.

A life that is utterly spent until there's nothing more to spend, until that flame just goes right out. And if on the way to that cross, it should be that we become popular. We know that that popularity is a mistake.

And that it will not last. It's going to turn to hate. Just as surely as those hosannas turned to Christ for his blood.

You know, and it's funny. People like to go away from church feeling good. You know, oh, I was so inspired today.

And they don't like to hear the message of the cross, but we need it badly. We need it badly. And we need to know finally that the life that you and I live every single day from the time we go to Jesus cross until the time we arrive at our own cross.

Every day is to be spent under the power of that cross of Christ. See, the death works in us. That life may work in the people to whom we minister.

The thorns in the flesh press down on us and make us weak. So that through these weak vessels, these, these wounded vessels, the power of God and the salvation of God and the healing of God can flow out to somebody else. And we begin then to see that the hard things that happened to us, the unfair things that happened to us, the afflictions that come to us are agents of the cross meant for the purpose of bringing us down to the place where we are indeed broken bread and poured out wine crushed so that the life of God can flow out.

If you don't want that, then you're not, you don't understand the gospel. You don't understand what Jesus is talking about. See, and these hard things that begin to happen to us, instead of making us sour and cynical and bitter and hard and moaning and groaning and feeling sorry for ourselves, instead of that, we go through the pain and the confusion, bearing fruit that lasts and doing it with joy, not mourning.

Not only that, we keep right going, right on going, no matter how hard it gets. And we don't peter out anymore. See, because now we are men and women who have begun to experience freedom from our own vanity.

We're free from vanity because we're dead. We're free from vanity because our lives are really hidden with Christ in God. We're free because we're now willing that God's glory in us should indeed be covered up and hidden, even while his light shines forth from us and causes in a mysterious way our people out there to give glory to the father, not to us.

So this morning, as you come up here to receive a bread and wine, which is the food of the cross, don't do it lightly. You're taking into your body that food. And the question that you must answer before God, to God, is this, as you eat this bread and drink this wine, are you dead with Christ? Is your life hid with Christ in God? And are you satisfied to remain hid with Christ in God until Christ, who is our life, appears in glory and to get no glory from anybody until that hour? Let's pray.

My heavenly father, I'm just asking, oh father, that you convict us with your spirit of the egotism, which is eating like a cancer at our spirits and the self-pity, which is just another form of that egotism, which is driving us far from the kingdom and the pride and this hunger and thirst for glory and this lust to push other people around and this craving for attention. And father, we just ask that you won't allow us to deceive ourselves, to escape the issue by pointing to somebody else. But father, that you'll deal with us until these things are under the blood.

For good. We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.