Gooding, David: 2 - Overcoming the Love of the World

Now, last evening we began our series of a few studies on the topic of overcoming the world. Last night we thought about the topic of overcoming the prince of this world, and tonight we turn to considering overcoming the love of the world. Two short scriptures will be enough to launch us for the moment upon our study. The first of them is to be found in the first epistle by John, and chapter two and verse fourteen: I have risen unto you, fathers, because you know him which is from the beginning. I have risen unto you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abideth in you, and you have overcome the evil one. Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the vain glory of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof, but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever. And the second portion for our reading is in the book of Exodus in chapter thirty three. We begin to read there from verse twelve. And Moses said unto the Lord, See, thou sayest unto me, bring up this people, and thou hast not let me know whom thou wilt send with me. Yet thou hast said, I know thee by name, and thou hast also found grace in my sight. Now therefore, I pray thee, if I have found grace in thy sight, show me now thy ways that I may know thee, to the end that I may find grace in thy sight, and consider that this nation is thy people. And he said, my presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest. And he said unto him, if thy presence go not with me, carryest not up hence. For wherein now shall it be known that I have found grace in thy sight, I and thy people? Is it not in that thou goest with us, so that we be separated, I and thy people, from all the earth, all the people that are upon the face of the earth. And the Lord said unto Moses, I will do this thing also that thou hast spoken, for thou hast found grace in my sight, and I know thee by name. And he said, show me, I pray thee, thy glory. And he said, I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and will proclaim the name of the Lord before thee, and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. And he said, thou canst not see my face, for men shall not see me and live. And the Lord said, behold, there is a place by me, and thou shalt stand upon the rock, and it shall come to pass while my glory passeth by, that I will put thee in a cleft of the rock, and there cover thee with my hand until I have passed by. And I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back, but my face shall not be seen. And the Lord give us good understanding of his holy word. Overcoming then the love of the world. Love not the world, says John, neither the things that are in the world. If any man loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. But once more this evening, as last evening, we hit upon a question. What exactly does John mean by his term when he says, love not the world? This time, of course, he begins to define it for us. He says that all that is in the world, the desire of the flesh and the desire of the eyes and the pride of life is not of the Father, but is of the world. And perhaps immediately we want to make a small protest to John and say, but John, thy dear apostle, please explain, you'll see. Didn't God make this world, and hasn't God filled it himself with lovely and beautiful things, such as our flesh desires? John, what about potatoes, apples, and pomegranates, grapefruits, and oranges? Are they not God's own handiwork, and uh, are we forbidden to desire them, John? How come that we're not to love the world of beautiful things that God himself has made? And when you say, John, that uh, all that is in the world, the desire of the eyes is not of the Father, how can it possibly be, John? Didn't God make daffodils and roses and rhododendra and all the lovely blossoms that delight our eyes, and do not our eyes rightfully desire to see these beauties and the wonders of them? How come, John, that we are now told that all these lovely things that are in the world are not of the Father, so much so that if we love them and desire them, the love of the Father is not in us. Perhaps John will leave us tonight to solve our own question. So how shall we solve it then? Shall we say then that what the word really means is the desire for bad things, the desire of the flesh, desire for evil and vicious things, for indulging the basest of our can- carnal appetites. In other words, ought we to translate the word, not the desire of the flesh, but the lust of the flesh, all those abominable things that it would be a shame to mention in public. Is it that John is just saying, well, now, my dear brethren, keep off those things if you please, because if you love those things, then the love of the Father is not in you. And when it comes to the desire of the eyes, does he mean our eyes looking at things that are disgraceful and shameful, pornography and violence and such like things, and that we ought to guard our eyes from even wanting to look at them? But, uh, of course, he's not thinking of all the nice things. So we once more ought to translate him, uh, all that is in the world, the lust, the desire to see evil things, the lust of the eyes. Now I suspect that it would be very tempting to us to translate it and understand it that way. Well, I'm going to suggest to you tonight that that would be far from being the right interpretation of it, it would be an interpretation fraught with peril. It is the fact, ladies and gentlemen, that there will be more people lost eternally because they have loved nice things and good things, than there will be people who are lost because they have lusted after evil things. And if that be a strange statement to your ears, then let me begin to justify it by quoting you an Old Testament passage. For tonight, if the time allows me, I shall want to take two Old Testament stories that will help us to come to terms with John's exhortation and help us to understand it. Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the desires of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, and the vain glory of life is not of the Father, but of the world. And the first passage I want to quote to you comes from the second creation story in the book of Genesis, and it may help you to keep active and alive and awake tonight, if you care to take your Bible in hand, and we'll examine together the second creation story. It begins in chapter two of the book of Genesis and verse four. The question may arise in your mind, why does our preacher tonight call it the second creation story? Well, in fact, in the book of Genesis, there are three creation stories. They do not contradict each other, of course. They are like the four gospels. The four gospels do not contradict each other, but they look at the life of our Lord Jesus from four different points of view, bringing out his multiple glory in that different ways. So there are three records of creation in the book of Genesis. They do not contradict, they look at creation from three distinctively p- distinctive points of view. And the first creation story fills chapter one and the first three verses of chapter two. This is the most famous of them all. It is the account that tells us that in six days God made heaven and earth, and he rested on the seventh day. Then in chapter two verse four comes the second creation story. It fills chapters 2, 3, and 4. You may care to notice one of its leading themes that serves to bracket these three chapters together. The theme is the theme of the ground. Look, if you will, at verse five: And no plant of the field was yet in the earth, and no herb of the field had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. But there went up a mist from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground. And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul. Verse nine: and out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. Verse nineteen: and out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field. So in this creation story, the first of its three parts tells us of man's creation and emphasizes the fact that man was made out of the ground and made to till the ground. Chapter three follows the story of creation with the story of the fall and the curse that came upon man. Let's look at chapter three and verse seventeen. And unto Adam he said, because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife and hast eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee, saying, thou shalt not eat of it, cursed is the ground for thy sake. In toil shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life. Verse nineteen: in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread till thou return unto the ground, for out of it dost thou taken, and unto dust shalt thou return. Verse twenty three: therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the Garden of Eden to till the ground from whence he was taken. So, like the first third, the second third of this creation story concentrates our attention on the ground. Man was made out of the ground, he was made to till the ground, and when he fell, God cursed the ground for his sake, and he was promised that one day he would return to the ground. Many people end the story there, but chapter four is an integral part of this second creation story, for as we shall now notice, it continues the theme. This is God talking to Cain after Cain had murdered Abel. Verse ten of chapter four: and he said, what hast thou done? The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground, and now cursed art thou from the ground, which has opened her mouth to receive thy brother's blood from thy hand. When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength. Verse thirteen: and Cain said unto the Lord, my punishment is greater than I can bear. Behold, thou hast driven me up this day from the face of the ground. Three stories all in a row, like pearls on the necklace, clustering together in this second record of creation, its basic theme, the ground. When Adam sinned, the ground was cursed. When Cain sinned, he was cursed from the ground. Let that be for a moment. You'll wonder for a while why I said all that. We shall come back to it later. But now we come to one of the major themes of this second creation story, and that is precisely this: what is life? This is the story that's going to tell us of God's solemn warning to Adam and Eve, that whereas they might eat of every tree in the garden, they were not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for in the day thou eatest of it, thou shalt surely die. We're going to read of death, therefore, but if we're going to understand death, we must first of all understand life, must we not? You can't have death until there's been life, can you? So to understand death, you must first understand life. And this is the part of Genesis that's going to talk to us about human life and raise the great question, what is life? What constitutes human life? What does it mean to be alive? In other words, what exactly is man? And from chapter two verse four onwards, the historian gives us a number of the characteristic features of what is human life. It tells us, first of all, that God made man of the dust of the ground. You ask, what is man? Then the answer comes back, man is so much stuff. That's what man is, made of the dust of the ground. The chemistry of the human body is the same chemistry as the earth and as the whole universe, in fact. Man is so much stuff. Ah, but man is more than stuff, isn't he? Because if man was merely stuff, he wouldn't be alive at all in any sensible fashion. So then we are told that God breathed into man's nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul. Man is animate. Man is physically alive. Man can reproduce. Man is a living soul. It is sometimes held that that distinguishes man from animal, but according to a later chapter of Genesis, uh, that is not quite the fact of the case, for Genesis uses the same term of animals. It means, if it means no more, that man is physically alive. But let me put it to you, is being physically alive the complete life? Is that all life is, to be physically alive? Well, now, of course it isn't. For now, you notice another thing, uh, that though man is, uh, so much stuff and he's a living soul, we're told that God planted a garden in Eden, and the Lord God made trees there to grow out of the ground, to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. I ask you to notice the order in which God, uh, mentions those things. Every tree first that is good to look at, good for sight, and then every tree that is good for food. The first lot, the trees that are good for sight, remind us that color, form, beauty are an essential part of human life. Just imagine a baby born in a windowless dark cell and living all its life in complete darkness in that cell. You'd hardly call that a truly human life, would you? Part of human life is what we shall call the aesthetic sense, the ability to appreciate, to see, to admire, to enjoy the marvelous beauties that God has put around us. Oh, praise God, as you sit in the seat tonight for those marvelous, beautiful things. God could have made our world a utility world, couldn't he? White paint all over or something like that, you see, or black. And I suppose we should have still been alive, but what a very limited life it would be. Just imagine the riot of color and the wonder of the mind of God to invent such color. One of the lovely things I have enjoyed in coming to Australia is all the way that God has favored you with trees galore and blossoms galore. Why he likes Australians more than Irishmen and Englishmen, I haven't yet found the answer to the problem, but he seems to all the marvelous color, you'll see. And if you ask me to choose between color and carrots, I then, uh, you'll see color, birds, uh, flowers, uh, plants, paintings, and potatoes. I like to try hard to choose the color, you'll see. There have been some Christians, haven't they, that have thought that, um, food for your stomach is a more worthy thing and more Christian thing, and that's a right thing for Christians to be interested in than would art, for instance, and painting and things like that, which they tended to regard as a bit frivolous and perhaps not too spiritual. But that surely is false, isn't it? If you had a friend in hospital, uh, hesitating on the borders of life, you wouldn't perhaps take him a bag of potatoes, would you? You might take him a bunch of roses to look at, and looking at the roses, all their beauty might be just that little thing required to hold his interest in life and bring him through his crisis and back to health. For color, song, beauty, these things are necessary for our psychological and mental health, and a loving God has provided them profusely, hasn't he? Not forgetting, of course, the trees that are good for food, the potatoes and the runner beans come in useful on times, do they not? So man is so much stuff, and then he is animate, he's alive in that sense, and now we perceive that part of his life is the aesthetic sense. He's alive that way. Have pity on your friends that are colorblind, do. And then, of course, um, there's another side to life, isn't there? And that's work. God planted a garden in Eden, which shows that the rest of the world wasn't yet garden, and there he put man, you'll see. God Almighty first planted a garden, as Francis Bacon said, you'll see, and gave Adam an idea of what he could do, and what a charming exercise it was in those days, you'll see. As Adam went about his daily work. Work is an essential part of our human well-being. Allow me to point out, ladies and gentlemen, that God works. He doesn't have to work for a living, not God, you know. Well, then you say, why does he work? Well, I was going to say, for the sheer fun of working, do you see? That's God. What do you suppose he's got the galaxies up aloft for? Not to earn himself a living. He's got them there because God enjoys working. My Father worketh in the two, said the blessed Lord Jesus, and I work. It is a central part, really, of our human makeup, isn't it? We may feel genuinely sorry for men and women whose work is dreadfully dull. But any work almost is better than none, isn't it, to keep us mentally alive. Oh, I hope you agree with me on my view of heaven. Some people seem to look upon heaven as an old people's home, where beloved saints may retire and put their feet on, uh, up on the heavenly footrest and never do a stroke of work again. How mistaken can you get? Heaven will be heaven because of the work there is to do in heaven, you see. And our Lord advised us that if you work hard for him here and use your ten talents to gain another ta- ten talents, look out when you get to heaven, for you'll be given ten cities to look after, you see. If you don't like working, uh, well, don't work for the Lord now, because if you do, you'll get rewarded with an enormous amount of work in heaven, you'll see. But then God had the idea that work is a part of humans being alive, and to be condemned to do no work would, in the end, disintegrate our personalities and make us feel useless. And then not only work, of course, but fellowship. That also is a big part of life, isn't it? God said, it is not good for man to be alone. I will make an help meet for him. And thus he created the highest and most beautiful kind of human fellowship that is known to man, or at least so my friends who are expert in these matters tell me, you'll see. I happen, ladies and gentlemen, to be a bachelor. But there you are, some folks have told me it is the highest form of life, fellowship. And what would life be if we were but Robinson Crusoes deserted on an island with not even a Good Friday in sight, you'll see. Mm. And not only those things as well, but isn't God magnificent? He's given us language too. What a thing language is. And you notice the context in which it is told us. God said it isn't, uh, good for man to be alone. So out of the ground, God made all the beasts of the field, and he brought them to Adam. And with the genius given to humankind by God, Adam named all the animals. I once worked under a professor of Latin who used to point to this verse as the origin of language. The genius of human language is that humans have found the idea of using an arbitrary sound to indicate an object. You'll see, and we cannot go into that anymore, tempted as I am. That is the genius of human language. The animals don't have it, do they? Or only in rudimentary fashion. And I was talking about the context in which it occurs, do you see? God said it's not good for man to be alone, so he made all the animals and then brought them before Adam to see what Adam would call them, and Adam called them all, but amongst all the animals there was not found a help meet for him. So God made Eve for Adam, and he called her Eve, you see. Now, ladies and gentlemen, as you'll know, when the lion tries to tell his lioness how beautiful she is, he is sorely limited in what he can say, you know, an odd grunt or two here and biting of her ear there, and that's the sum total, you see. Uh, dear, dear, dear, dear me, how limited they are. But when you gentlemen try to tell your wives how beautiful they are and how wonderful, oh, what heights of rhetoric you do rise to, gentlemen, don't you? What a lovely thing language is. Never you say, oh, but that's only words, as though there was something bad about words. Words are the most marvelous thing. The soldier at the front, you know, that receives a package from home, and it's a tin of cocoa and a love letter from his wife, will die, I fancy, with the love letter in his ri- in his pocket rather than the tin of cocoa. Words ultimately mean the most, don't they? And having the ability of language opens to us the pos- possibility of having concourse with him who is called the Word. Oh, when all the work is done, when all the deeds are over, what shall we do but to delight in eternity with the fellowship with God's Son? And the wonder is that we can talk to him. Because of that, some have called mankind the high priest of creation. For man has the wonderful facility of being able amongst the creatures of God's hand, to rise up and tell God what it is like to be one of his creatures. One of my friends used to say what marvelous conversations they were between God and Adam in those far off days. Picture, he says, the day that Adam discovered strawberries, and when God came down in the cool of the day, Adam was all full of his strawberries, do you see? And some of my more severe friends have said, oh, that's an unworthy thing to say. You're talking to God about strawberries, that's terrible. And they're forgetting that when they have a dish of strawberries at dinner, they first bow their heads, don't they, and give grace at the table and thank God for strawberries. What a wonderful thing language then is that God has given us men and women. We're sorry indeed for those that are born without the facility or are both dumb and deaf. It's a diminution of life, isn't it, to be without language? But when we have considered all these forms of life, what it really means to be really human, really alive. Then we must consider the highest dimension of human life, and that this chapter tells us was fellowship with God. And a fellowship that was carefully marked out and delimited. Delimited by moral considerations. Says God, of every tree of the garden you may eat, except for this one tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Of that tree thou mayest not eat, for in the day you eat thereof, you shall most surely die. A relationship with God himself, delimited by moral considerations, God's moral authority, his right as a creator to lay down the terms upon which man is related to him. And if you think of that in a moment, for a moment, you will perceive another magnificent thing about God. For when God delimited man's relationship to him, he did not decide to make man as a machine that had no choice. You see, the very fact that God had to say to Adam, thou shalt not eat of the tree of life, implied, didn't it, that Adam had the ability to eat it if he chose to. So two things are simultaneously true. God forbade man to eat the tree of life, but God himself had given him the ability to stretch forth his hand and eat it if he so choose. Ponder the implication of that relationship with God. For he could have made us machines. We should have done his will undeviatingly. But if we'd been mere machines, our relation to him would have been very different, wouldn't it? It couldn't have been one of love to start with. Imagine you're coming to your home tonight and sitting in your lounge, and in walks a modern robot equipped with human voice and comes and puts its robotic arms around your neck and puts pecks your cheek and says, I love you, dear. What would you do? You'd kick it in the ribs, wouldn't you? Say, don't be daft, don't thing. Words are meaningless because you can't help saying it. And it is a staggeringly wonderful thing about God that he gave us the ability to choose, to choose him, to obey him, and to love him, or to choose to disobey him and go from him. Oh, God gave man the warning, don't you eat of that tree, for on the day you eat thereof, you shall most surely die. Life then, all these various characteristics and departments of life, delightful all of them in themselves, their crowning joy to be enjoyed in fellowship with God. And then came the devil. I know not whether it was one fine morning or afternoon. But getting Eve by herself, he started up the conversation with a deliberate exaggeration. Hello, my dear, said he. Hello, said Eve. He said, I hear that you mustn't eat of any of these trees in this garden. No, no, said Eve, that's not correct, servant. We may eat of the whole lot, except one, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. I thought so, said the servant. Typically God, you know, my dear, typically God. Oh, how he loves tantalizing people. He puts beautiful things in front of their noses and works up all their desire, and they want this beautiful thing, and then he tells them they can't have it, you see. That typical God. Oh no, said Eve. God has said, uh, no. God has said you mustn't eat of that tree, for in the day you eat of it, you'll surely die. Oh, come off it, my dear, said Satan. Nobody round here believes that kind of thing nowadays, you know. Die, of course you won't die, woman. You'll live. Look at the tree, woman. Look at it, woman. So he looked at it. And can't you see it? Well, she said, yes, I, yes, I can, I. And the tree was good for food. And then she looked again and saw that the tree was good to look at. And looking further, she saw that the tree was desirable to make you wise. I'm telling you, said the serpent, that's life, woman. Take it. Physical satisfaction, good for food. Aesthetic satisfaction, good to look at. Desirable to make you wise. Intellectual satisfaction, that's life, woman. Take it and live. No, said Eve, I mustn't do that. God has said the day you eat thereof, you'll surely die. Oh, of course you won't, said Satan. That's God deceiving you. That's life. God knows, in fact, that in the day you eat thereof, you'll be as God himself, knowing good and evil and independent of God, and can choose your own pleasures and know what's good for you and what isn't. Fooled by that kind of language, Eve took of the tree, gave to Adam, and they died. Not all at once, of course, in all the departments of life, but the highest thing had gone dead. Eventually, all the other areas of life would die as well. Now I urge upon you to notice the satanic cunning, the devilish cleverness of the temptation. It wasn't desire for evil things, was it? The first sin was not that Eve put strychnine in Adam's tea or something to get rid of him. It was a desire for things that in themselves were good things. It was good for food. It was a tree beautiful in appearance, lovely aesthetically. It was a tree desirable to make you wise, and there's nothing wrong in being wise, is there? Intellectual satisfaction. And we're coming, beginning to come to where we can answer our question about John, are we not? It was desire for things good in themselves that ruined Eve and ruined Adam. Because they were tempted to take them independently of God, in total disregard for his word, to attempt to enjoy life apart from God. I tell you again, there will be more people in hell because of their desire for nice and good things than there will be people who are there because of their lust for things in themselves evil. For you see, life to be life. What must it be? In the book of Deuteronomy, God explained to Israel, and our blessed Lord Jesus quoted it to the serpent in the wilderness, didn't he? To the devil in the wilderness. Man shall not live. Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God shall man live. That is not God being stingy, as the devil would have it. That is not God being tantalizing and keeping us back from good. The greatest significance about the beauty of a daffodil is that God made it for you, sir, and wants you to enjoy the daffodil with him, and lead you to him thus. But to attempt to enjoy that daffodil in complete rejection or forgetfulness of God and his word. That's not life. That's the beginning of death. Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. All these other stages of life were but the basis that God gave us as human beings, that they might lead us to him and enjoy his fellowship, and thus eventually know eternal life. To take the gifts apart from him is to start dying. One of these days, perhaps what some of you, I don't know, but you might even be inclined to have pity on an Englishman and ask him out to dinner. You'll say he looks a friendless soul, he does. Let's do it as a work of charity and invite him to dinner and confer our friendship upon him, you see. So I arrive in my best bib and tucker, you'll see, and you'll sit me in the place of honor, madam, by your side, you see, at the table. And there you have prepared a marvelous meal. Nothing wrong with the meal. The soup is magnificent. The hors d'oeuvre are out of this world. The fish course is delightful, and the meat course likewise, right down to the dessert at the end. Well, just as we're diving into the soup, you think it's time to make conversation, you'll see. So you say, now, uh, where do you come from in England exactly? And I take no notice. This is an odd Englishman. Englishmen are odder than I thought they were. So, a little later over the fish course, you have another go. And you say, have you seen much of Australia yet? No reply. I'm stuffing my mouth with the fish, you see. You say, odd. At the middle of the meat course, you make another attempt. You said, did you go anywhere particular on holiday this year? And I raise myself up and looked you straight in the eye. I say, look here, madam, I'd like you to know something. I think this meal is magnificent. I think the cuisine is exquisite. And those, uh, uh, Rembrandts you have on the wall, I, I, I admire Rembrandts, you know, I think Rembrandt was absolute genius of a painter. But as for you, madam, I'm not interested in you, and I very much doubt whether you exist. And even if you do exist, I'm not interested in you. You see, this food is enough for me. I'm not interested in you. And what would you do? Reach for the ejector button on my seat, I fancy. You would say what a consummate fool this Englishman is. Of course the food is good. Do you think I'd put him poultry fare in front of him? Of course the food is good, but the reason I asked him into this banquet was so that he should be able to get to know me and we might become friends, and to take the food and throw away the friendship. That's insanity, isn't it? Yet when the Son of God was here, he had to complain to his contemporaries. He had fed them miraculously with loaves and fishes one day, and they came the next day wanting more, and he said, no thank you, gentlemen, no more for you. For all you're interested in is the food for your stomachs. Having the sense even to ask yourself the plain question, what hand is that that was behind this marvelous miracle of the feeding of us yesterday? Who can this be? How wonderful he must be to be able to multiply food like that. You're not interested in me nor my hand either. All you're interested in, like a lot of pigs, the food for your stomachs. Tragic, isn't it? And that is what John surely means. Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. For if we love them without the Father, if they come between us and the Father, if the lovely things of life so absorb our time, thought, and energy that we have no time for God or his word, but a brief oddment of a Sunday. Then it will not help us that the things are nice things. For without God, the nicest of things become simply what John calls the world. If any man loved the world like that, the love of the Father is not in him. And you'll see it has a way of progressing, doesn't it, when we start loving the world instead of the Father, to the exclusion of the Father, in disobedience with the Father. Then presently our goals become different, and our standards become different, and there enters into it the pride of life. Now the whole objective in life is getting these nice things. That becomes our goal. We have a house that's better than the Jones next door. We have a car that's superior. Our child goes to a better school than other people's children. And not now the will of God becomes the governing feature of life, but the things of life become the governing feature. And do you know it's not merely the worldling that can be entrapped in that kind of thing, is it? Many a worldling is, of course. It's possible for believers to get entrapped similarly, isn't it? Sometimes unintentionally. One part of my life, I lived amongst the miners, the coal miners in the northeast of England, and I lodged with believers. And they often used to tell me, David, in the days of the depression, when our men folk were out of work for years on end, we women folk often had to kneel down in the morning to pray God for the food to put on the plates at the next meal time. And they said, in those days we lived near the Lord. But then after the war we prospered in the mines, and we got good homes, and we got good cars, and uh... said they were not living so near the Lord as once we did. Pity, isn't it? Love not the world, says John. Neither the things that are in the world, however good in themselves, if they push out God and his word and capture our hearts to the exclusion of him. It is, of course, a slippery slope. When Adam and Eve sinned, then God in his mercy did not obliterate them, but put them under discipline, did he not? Amongst the discipline was his daily work. Now, says God, cursed is the ground for thy sake. When you now till it, as you will have to in order to survive, it will bring forth thorns and thistles to you, Adam. Daily work ever since has ceased to be always the occupation of a gentleman and a gentlewoman. Interesting as our work is, there is the drudgery element, isn't there? And often the thorn and the thistle of various kinds, and work is a kind of an ordeal, and life is full of sweat and toil and tears. Don't say in your heart, my good friend, that's God being unkind. That is God being kind. It is the fact, isn't it, that so often it is life's difficulties that bring us to the Lord. If mankind had been allowed to go on taking of their tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and all went well in paradise, I say it honestly, there would, uh, they wouldn't have missed God. Gone on till going over the edge of time into eternity, they would have been lost forever beyond recall. It is the hard discipline of life, more often than not, brings us back to sense our need of God. But if Adam disobeyed God, Cain went further, didn't he? And that's why I read you those verses at the beginning. Man was made out of the dust of the ground, and he was made to till the ground. Adam sinned, and the ground was cursed for his sake. Cain sinned, and he was cursed from the ground. You say, what does that mean? Well, think what was happening when man sinned. God made a way back to God, that man might have fellowship with God reintroduced. And Abel was prepared to come that way, and by faith came the way that God had indicated to him. Abel came that way, Cain came another way. God said to Cain, sorry, Cain, that won't do. You must come the way I tell you. Cain got angry. And he killed Abel. And said, in effect, to God, look here, God, you'll have my sacrifice the way I bring it, or if you won't, you won't have mine, and you won't have Abel's either. He murdered Abel. What would you have done about that if you were God? Suppose you are rich, and I expect you are, and, uh, you see on your estate you have a beautiful hothouse and a beautiful garden, and you say to the gardener, I'm going away for 6 months, my boy, and when I come back, I want the garden vegetable plot full of the cucumbers, if you don't mind. Not tomatoes, I can't stick tomatoes, uh, cucumbers, if you please. And you go away for six months, and you come back, and the vegetable plot is full of tomatoes. You call his nibs, the gardener. You're saying, how do you account for this, my good gentleman? I thought I told you that I didn't like tomatoes, I like cucumbers. Where are the cucumbers, and what are these tomatoes doing? And the man says, I know you told me that you don't like tomatoes, but I like tomatoes, and I'm going to have tomatoes. And what's more, you're going to have tomatoes too. What would you say to the gardener? I know what we'd say in England. They're not necessarily so polite as you. We'd say, here are your employment cards, goodbye. Man was made not only of the ground, he was made to till the ground. That's what God made him for. According to Genesis in those early days, that was the man's raison d'être, that why was why he was made. Adam failed, bad gardener he was, and filled the world not only with thorns and thistles, but with a whole world full of sinners. Cain was worse, wasn't he? When Abel came God's way and Cain didn't, and God said to Cain, now look here, Cain, that won't do, you must come this way. Cain turned round upon God and said, God, if you don't have it my way, you won't have it Abel's way either, for I shall murder him. And God said, you may go, Cain. You might as well anyway. For now, when you till the ground, cursed art thou from the ground, it will not yield to you her strength. Get out. You may not think that's a bad sentence to be dismissed from gardening, but you must understand in those far off days that was the reason why man was made, to garden for God. And Cain lost the very reason for which he was created. My punishment, said he, is greater than I can bear. Everybody will kill me. No, they won't, says God. I shall see to it that you still exist. Just imagine the horror of existence. To exist, having lost the very reason for which he was created. And ladies and gentlemen, this is the fate of everyone who goes after life's nice things and forgets God. For man was made not merely to till the physical ground, but to till it and to live for the pleasure of God. If man loses fellowship with God and turns his back on God. He loses the whole rationality of his existence. What is the cure of it, you say? And somebody says the answer surely is redemption. Yes, you've got it right the first time. The answer is redemption. But I must add now a brief postscript to that answer. I want now to take the story a little stage further that we began yesterday, and to make the point that it is possible not only to pervert the good things of nature and turn them into worldliness, it is possible to pervert the very fruits of redemption and turn them into idolatry. You say, what do you mean? Well, last night we thought how Israel were slaves in Egypt, how Pharaoh tried to keep back from them that they'd had a past and that there was a future inheritance. And God, in his mercy, broke the prison walls and brought Israel out. Here were Israel, therefore, on their journey, striking out to their great inheritance that lay before. And now God had to teach them a lesson, and the lesson is this: what is the goal of redemption? Why has God redeemed us? And we must be careful here, lest we come to a hasty and wrong conclusion. Somebody says, well, the goal of redemption in Israel's case was obvious. My good man, you've told us a thousand times. The goal of redemption was the inheritance, Canaan out there in the blue there, you know, the inheritance flowing with milk and honey, that surely was the goal of redemption. No, it wasn't. That was their destiny, I, I, I, I know it wasn't the goal of redemption. And to make the point exceedingly clear, God, long before they got to Canaan, himself came down on Mount Sinai to explain to Israel what the goal of redemption was. Listen to him talking to Moses. He says, Moses, go and tell the people this offer that I want to make to them. Say to them, you have seen what I did to the Egyptians, how I bore you on eagle's wings and brought you to Oh. myself. Myself. God is the goal of redemption. Let my people go, said God to Pharaoh, that they may go to Canaan. No, no, no. Let my people go that they may worship me. That is the goal of redemption. And long before they got to Canaan, God had come down to make the proposal. This is the goal. Will they have it? If you'll have it, you shall be a peculiar treasure to me, for all the earth is mine. You shall be a kingdom of priests to me. Yours will be the high honor of serving me daily, lying near my heart, loving me, serving me, worshiping me. I am the goal of your redemption. And if you will have it, then I suggest that you make me a sanctuary, and I shall come and dwell with you, and long before you get to Canaan, you may serve me and love me and revere me and listen to me and enjoy my company and conversation. That was the goal, not just the honey and the milk of Canaan. God wanted to make it clear. There were lots of Canaanites in Canaan, you know, stuffed full with honey and milk. They didn't want God. In the end, God eliminated them. You see, if we could get home to heaven and not meet God, what use would it be? God then was the goal of redemption. Israel hadn't got away from Sinai before a desperate thing happened. But they lost the faith in God, and they lost the faith in Moses. They made themselves other gods. I can't tell you exactly how it happened. Perhaps it was, as you know, a fellow, I think he must have been clever, PhD at least, and he was sitting at the bottom of the mountain one of those days, you see, while Moses had gone up the mountain to get the directions for making the tabernacle, you'll see. And he'd been gone 2 or three weeks, and nothing had been seen of the man, not feather nor bone. And one day this learned man turned to his fellow and he said, you know, uh, I've been thinking, old chap, this is a very funny situation in which we find ourselves, isn't it? Oh, is it, said the other. Yes, he said, I mean, sitting at the bottom of a bottom of a mountain in the middle of the desert, twizzling our thumbs. Ha. I mean, following a man that we can't see and don't know what's become of him, disappeared up the mountain out of sight. What a funny position to be in. You know, we can't sit here forever, can we? Oh, said the other fellow, there's no need to worry. He's coming back again. He said, you know, before he went up the mountain, he would come back. The other man said, they said that, uh, two weeks ago, and he hasn't been back yet. You'll see, and anyway, he took no food with him, so the man has perished, surely he's perished. And you know, we're sitting here like a lot of fools. All this business of Moses coming back is not true, you know, and we can't sit here forever. And the idea spread. And presently the whole lot of them came to Aaron, and they said, look here, Aaron, we've had, uh, we've had enough of sitting at the bottom of this mountain trying to believe in a man we can't see who's supposed to be coming back, and he hasn't turned up, you see. We've got to be going places. You can't just sit around in life, you've got to be aiming at something in life. No, Aaron, they said, come, make us gods to go before us. Give us something that we can aim at in life. Well, said Aaron, what would you suggest? So they thought a while, and then said Aaron, I have an idea. Give me your earrings. Now think about the earrings a moment. In the ancient world, there being no banks, you'll see, people carried their excessive wealth with them, their excess will- wealth with them on their person, and these were the earrings, some of the wealth. And you say, what's wrong in wealth? Nothing at all. Where did they get it from? Oh, they got it as a byproduct of their redemption. You may remember when they were redeemed from Egypt. God said, you shall spoil the Egyptians, and the Egyptians pressed on them the silver and gold and precious stones and all kinds of things. They got this wealth as a byproduct of their redemption. And now see what has happened. What had begun as a byproduct of redemption now became a substitute God, a substitute goal in life. And they made the calf, and they danced around it, and they said, these be thy gods, O Israel, gods to go before you, gods to aim at in life. These be thy gods that brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. And God came very near to destroying them in an instant. It's happened again and again many times, hasn't it? We'll see, take the last century in Britain, where there were great revivings and evangelical awakenings, and people who had no education and couldn't read or write got converted, and they learned to read and write, and they lived on a pittance, poor souls, in those days. But they loved the Lord, and they read his word, and they preached it, and God blessed them, and thousands upon thousands of men and women were brought to Christ throughout the whole of the northeast of England. And presently, there's a generation or two go by, and these once-time people who were unlearned and unlettered became educated. And of course, their material conditions improved as a result of their being redeemed. God be praised. And they no longer got dead drunk, and they no longer wasted their money on, uh, on cigarettes and things, and they began to have decent homes, and their children better still, and their children better still. And then, instead of making the gospel and the salvation of the soul unto God the goal of their activities, they substituted the social improvement as the goal of their activities, and they no longer preach the gospel. It was social concern and social betterment and that kind of thing that they now made the goal of their activities. And presently, they went one stage further, and instead of preaching the gospel of redemption, they said it was better education that would redeem people and save people. And in the end, they gave up the gospel. Don't believe it anymore. Christianity has become a mere social concern. It can happen with us believers too, couldn't it? We're saved, thank God. And then by God's good grace, we prosper. And then, little by little, life's goal changes. Instead of God, life's chief goal being God and his service, it becomes the material things of life. And we wander in heart from the Lord, and we love the world, the love of the Father diminishes. What shall save us? There is only one thing that can possibly save us, and that is to be found in the passage that we read together. Said Moses to God, God, you have told me to bring up your people to their great inheritance. How can I possibly bring them up unless you go with them? And one thing more, God said to him. Show me your glory. And God said, there's a place by me here, Moses. You may stand in the cleft of the rock, and I will put my hand over you, and I shall declare all my goodness. And the Lord passed by, and he declared the name of the Lord. Moses' face lit up and was transfigured by the wonder of the glory of the Lord. Moses it was who eventually brought the people to the point of repentance, and they built God his tabernacle, and God came and dwelled among them. My dear fellow believer, if it should be at all that the world is too near us, the world has forced itself in upon us by its pressures and taken over some of the love of our hearts that ought to be the love of the Lord. Then tonight, shall we not pray like Moses prayed his prayer? Oh God, show me your glory. The sight once more of your surpassing wonder may so capture my vision, my imagination, my love, my affection, my devotion, that your glory shall become a consuming fire in my very heart. Till it become the great objective of my life.