Out of the Rut 1974

There may be some of us whom the enemy tries to lure into that slough of the spawn where we get so discouraged and depressed and disgusted with ourselves we just want to lie down and die. But the evil one is much too clever to think that that would work with most of us, or all of us. He understands that with many of us, if we found ourselves in that kind of shape, such misery, that would be just what we would need to wake us up.

And pretty quickly we'd be calling on God, and before we knew it, God would be closer to us and we to God than we'd ever been before. And so the approach of the enemy to most of us is much more subtle. He doesn't want to take us through some dark night of the soul.

He doesn't want us tasting that pain of despair that might drive us to God. Rather, he applies his effort to try to help us to function pretty much as believers. We pray, more or less, and we think of ourselves as followers of Jesus.

And once in a while we share the gospel with somebody whose heart is crying out to the Lord, and yet underneath it all there is a numbness in our soul and an unreality to our prayers, a lingering, irritable, sour, cynical mood at the back of our minds, a weariness in our bodies, but it's all so subtle that people observing us from outside could never prove that we're spiritually dead, only from inside we know all too well that we're not exactly alive. And then the enemy starts going to work, and he whispers, and he says, Who do you think you're kidding? How long are you going to keep up that pretense? You're in a rut, and you can't get out. And when he says this, we look at ourselves, and then we try to struggle out of this rut, and we discover that we can't.

He's right. I'm in a rut, and I can't get out. And then we try to pray harder than we ever prayed, and nothing seems to happen.

Then we go to fellowship, trying to get a hold of that spark that might just ignite us back to that old enthusiasm that we once had. Doesn't work. Seems like nobody is able, nothing is able to penetrate that invisible wall of cotton that surrounds us everywhere we go, but especially when we come among believers.

And the annoying thing about all this is that everything is so vague. You're not exactly dirty. You're not exactly clean.

You're not exactly awake, and you're not completely asleep. You don't feel any strong misery, and you certainly don't have any joy. And after a few struggles, you know, a couple little crises, you say to yourself, well, you know, it could be worse.

Maybe I should just settle for this and quit struggling. And then you begin that long, growing spiritual death sliding through the years that's so painless and so subtle that you have no idea how far you have moved from God until there's neither the strength nor the desire left to get back to him. Now that's the disease which I believe is the most deadly and dangerous and most prevalent among us.

The author of the book of Hebrews understands this sickness very well, apparently, obviously. There's no book in scripture like the book of Hebrews for dealing with this disease of spiritual numbness and this aloofness that comes over us. All through that book, you know, he's talking to the person who's sliding gradually away from the light, slowly hardening his heart.

And we would all of us do well to take the book of Hebrews and go through it carefully and underline and circle phrases and words that speak to our condition. As we do this, God will visit us. The Spirit of God will talk to us and teach us and quicken us and help us to do that housecleaning that most of us need.

Meanwhile, I'd like to suggest that we just look at two verses this morning from Hebrews 12, verses 1 and 2. I'd like to read them. Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. In these verses, there are four things which are offered to us as ways to get up out of the rut.

And it doesn't take two years to get out of the rut. Maybe it takes two years or ten years to get into it. But you can get out of it and be out of it before you leave the room today if you're ready.

First of all, if we want to get out of the rut, it's tremendously helpful to know that there's a cloud of witnesses all around us who believe God and made it. And they were just as frail as we are, but they made it all the way. They kept pressing right on through to glory, not by some fantastic strength of will, not by some superhuman discipline, or some brainwashed, narrow-minded, fanatical fervor, but simply by trusting God.

And the 11th chapter of Hebrews, that's the passage which immediately precedes these two verses, is a catalog of people, flesh and blood people, who made it all the way. Abel made it. Enoch made it.

Abraham and Sarah made it. Moses made it. Rahab the harlot made it.

And countless people who weren't named have made it. Right through the world, right over to the city of God, and they weren't any more intelligent or strong-willed or together than we are. And their message to us is, trust God.

At the root of every failure we experience is our unwillingness to trust God. And so in mercy to us, the Spirit of God reaches down and pulls back the veil, and allows us at least to get a glimpse of these people, the spirits of just men made perfect, he talks about later on in this passage, who made it ahead of us. And they're on the other side of death rooting for us.

And they're as much as saying to us, don't give up, and don't be afraid, and don't be discouraged, you're going to make it. It's a beautiful thing. Second thing we need to do if we want to get out of this rut, is to lay aside every weight and sin, which clings so closely.

Now there are weights that hang on to our lives that are not necessarily evil in themselves, and yet they drag us back. You can't run the race when these things are hanging on to you. It may be an attachment that you have for some person, or an ambition, or a dream, or some security blanket that you've made a habit.

There's no doubt about it that the Lord wants us to love our mates, and our children. See, but if you allow your attachment to this loved one to be so that every time Jesus tells you to do something, this attachment reaches out and grabs all of you, and holds you where you are, and says, don't, one way or another. Or fills you with all kinds of conflict.

See, then you're not loving your mate or your child the way the Lord calls you to. You've got a weight dragging you back, and that thing has to, that has to be broken. Not with divorce, or not with disowning your child, but you have to rearrange this thing.

Under God, you have to rearrange it and make sure this doesn't happen. And some of us are bowed right down to the ground under the weight of our own importance. It should be that where you see a gathering of believers, you have a group of people who are free from that.

Delivered from their own importance, but usually it's the very opposite. If there's any place on earth where people are walking around bowed down under the two million tons of their own importance, it's where we find a professing Christian, walking around under the weight of our importance. We can't run the race when we have that low load.

You have to get rid of your importance before you can run the race. Now, we can recognize, you know, this guy has a load, and boy, does she have a load. Man, has she ever bent over.

And all the time we can hardly see, we have to look up like this to, you know, see what they're doing, because we're bowed down with our own importance. And then there are sins, the sins that cling to us, like leeches. I know it's a sin, but it's only a little sin, and it's not hurting anybody.

You know, and this sin that you cling to, and you tolerate, and you defend as if it's your pet cat, has you right down in the rut. And you'll never get out of the rut until you get rid of the sin. And you can get rid of that sin and say, well, I've tried before and I can't do it.

Yes, you can. You can get rid of the sin before you leave the place today, this place, by the power of the Lord who is here right now. If you will, first of all, see the sin for what it is.

It's not innocent. It's the thing that's keeping you down in that rut. It's holding you there.

And the minute you break with that little teeny tiny sin that isn't so important and put it aside, you will discover that that little sin, all the time, is 50 times bigger than you are. The third thing we're told to do in this passage, if we want to get up out of the rut, is to persevere. All through the book of Hebrews, we see the words endurance, patience, perseverance.

We have a race to run, a life to live, a course to travel. And we will never make it as long as we think we can do it in fits and starts. We get all revved up and we go for a little while and then we're all petered out.

We have to be revived every two months or sometimes every two days. The rut that we are in is just that. It's the rut of all kinds of good intentions, promises we make to ourselves, we're going to do this and we're going to do that.

And we're all the time thinking about what we're going to do and talking about what we're going to do and we never do anything. We need to get down to reality and just learn lesson number one of the believer to be able to plot in season and out of season. When we have companionship on the road and when we're all alone, when things make sense and when they don't, when we feel God's presence and when we feel nothing, to keep right on going.

Even if everything is meaningless all around us, with our eyes on him who is up ahead and gives us hope. Which brings us to the final thing we need if we're going to get up and stay out of that rut. We need to be looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

We have to get our eyes off ourselves, off our brothers and sisters, off our favorite Christian, off our favorite spiritual book, off our enemy, and fix our eyes on Jesus. And when we do, we will see him by the Spirit's power as the pioneer of our faith, the one who opens the way. Remembering that he was flesh and blood, he shared all the frailties of our nature, including the temptation to live a half-baked life.

He knew all about this. And he opened a road for us as the pioneer, which is not half-baked, which is burning with God's presence from beginning to end, and he enables us to walk that road with the power of his cleansing blood. Every time the evil one says, quit, turn aside, you'll never make it, you're not worthy, the blood comes down and cleanses us as we confess these sins.

And we see Jesus not only as the pioneer, we see him as the perfecter of our faith, the one who brings us all the way to the other end, gets us through. From the right hand of the throne of God, he pours out even at this hour his Spirit upon us, strengthening us to be able to do God's will and perform the things we have to get done. In the power of God.

It's not as if Jesus calls us to forsake all and follow, and then we have to go for 30 years without any help. But all the time he's helping us and teaching us and guiding us and strengthening us by his power. He's doing it right now.

If we'll only look for him. The message of the Spirit of God to us is that there's no excuse and no reason for a single one of us to be in that rut. If we're in that rut now, we can get out of that rut now.

As we remember our Lord's death in the breaking of bread, and as we commune with him in the cup of his atoning blood, may God help us to see that crowd of witnesses, people who made it ahead of us, and to lay aside every weight and every sin. May God help us to persevere. May God help us to get our eyes on Jesus.

As in the power of his resurrection, he takes us from his cross through our cross on to glory. A glory which we can see and taste every single step of the way. As long as we keep our eyes on him.

Let's pray. Lord, your eye sees our condition, each of us, right now. Exactly where we are.

And if we're at the bottom of a rut, you see this. And we're just asking for your help right now. We're praying that you, by your Spirit, will reach down and take hold of us.

That you'll set us free. And that where we're asleep, and where we're self-satisfied, and where we're smug, and where we're so busy, seeing everybody else's faults but our own. You'll deal with us in whatever way is necessary.

That we may come to life, and jump out of that rut, and walk with you from this hour on. We ask it for your mercy's sake. Amen.