Download Document - National Community Church

NATIONAL COMMUNITY CHURCH
September 26, 2010
Words: Words of Wisdom
Mark Batterson
Welcome to everybody at all six of our locations. We continue our ‘Words’ series this weekend.
Turn over to the book of Proverbs. We are reading through Proverbs as a church right now. If
you want to get in on that, you can find the reading plan at www.fromgardentocity.com. We are
talking about words of wisdom this weekend and is that not synonymous with Proverbs?
Proverbs are words of wisdom written by a guy named Solomon, who the Bible calls the wisest
man that ever lived. So, it probably behooves us to read this particular book. On a personal note,
I’m loving it. We’ve got a new routine this year with the new school year. I spend a couple of
minutes every morning with my oldest son, Parker. We read the Proverb of the day. There are 31
of them. We just spend a few minutes reading a Proverb and praying together and it’s a great
way to jump start the day. I have a particular appreciation for the book of Proverbs.
Turn over to Proverbs 5 and we’ll get there in just a moment.
Several years ago, my family joined a pool out in Maryland. There wasn’t an outdoor pool on the
Hill so we went out there. Summer joined the swim team. When the kids were a little bit
younger, every free moment, we’d go out there and go fishing. You have to go out Route 50 and
I quickly learned that there is a speed trap on Route 50 because the government kept sending me
pictures of my vehicle! ‘Well, thank you very much for that picture of our vehicle, I appreciate
that, zoomed in on the license plate.’ Can I get something off my chest? The speed limit there is
35 – are you kidding! Intuitively it has to be a 55 or 60 zone. I’m sure they get tens of millions
of dollars in revenue every year from that little spot. Here’s the deal, I quickly learned where to
slow down. I know where to slow down and I know where to speed back up again too. I know
where the speed trap is. The bottom line is – there is no reason to get that same ticket twice. Why
would you keep going into the same trap over and over again? By the way, I love driving the
route now and watching cars fly by me and knowing that they are going to get a picture in the
mail.
So, a couple of weeks ago, Parker started the 9th grade up at St. Johns in Northwest and I had to
find a new route to school and I discovered they have cameras up there too! I realize in sharing
this you are going to think I’m this terrible driver. I am. But I’m trying to be sanctified. Long
story short, we got a couple of pictures in the mail because I tried a couple of different routes.
All of that is to say this, if you keep getting the same ticket in the same trap, are you not an idiot?
Yes! I’m just being blunt. But how many of us fall into the same traps? Relationally or
financially or sexual, how often do we fall into the same traps? Over and over again and
seriously, are we not picking up on the fact that there are certain traps that we are going to get in
trouble?
I think Proverbs 5 is about avoiding some of these sinful traps that we get caught in so frequently
and I want to talk about how we avoid some of those traps. Proverbs 5:1
1 My son, pay attention to my wisdom;
listen carefully to my wise counsel.
2 Then you will show discernment,
and your lips will express what you’ve learned.
3 For the lips of an immoral woman are as sweet as honey,
and her mouth is smoother than oil.
4 But in the end she is as bitter as poison,
as dangerous as a double-edged sword.
7 So now, my sons, listen to me.
Never stray from what I am about to say:
8 Stay away from her!
Don’t go near the door of her house!
9 If you do, you will lose your honor
and will lose to merciless people all you have achieved.
Let’s stop right there for just a moment. Ladies, don’t think we are trying to be hard on you this
weekend. The woman here is the bad guy in this story but he is talking to his sons. So in light of
speaking to his sons, it is in that context that he is warning them to stay out of a sexual trap that
will lead them to spiritual ruin.
When I was a freshman at the University of Chicago, I played on our basketball team and we
traveled all over the country. I loved it. We would fly to different cities that I had never been too
and it was pretty cool. But I quickly learned my team’s routines and rituals. Long story short,
every away game, the night before, they would hit a bar or a strip club or someplace that I knew
would compromise my values and take me someplace that I shouldn’t go. It was tough as a
freshman. I got a reputation as a prude, but I never went out with them. I was the only guy that
stayed back from what they were doing. By the way, we didn’t win a single away game the entire
season. It is very difficult to play basketball with a hangover. I think that is when this verse
actually meant something to me, because up until that point I had lived a sheltered life. There
wasn’t even opportunity to go to places I shouldn’t. But there I was, in college, with a little bit of
independence and making decisions on your own, and I knew to stay away and not go near the
door of her house. And I’m grateful as I look back on it. We’ll come back to this but I’m pretty
convinced that a lot of our regrets are going someplace that if we hadn’t gone there, we wouldn’t
have done what we did or said what we said, but it started with us navigating in a way that
instead of staying away, how close can we get or how much can we flirt with this temptation?
How close can we get to the line? And because of that, we end up in trouble.
This week, I’ve been reading a book by Chip and Dan Heath entitled Switch. It’s a great book. In
the book, they talk about how some problems are not people problems. We might attribute them
to a person, but really they are situation problems and many of us fail to make this distinction.
Let me give you an example. It’s rush hour in D.C. and you are a commuter heading out of town
and someone cuts you off or speeds by you or is honking their horn at you. What is your initial
reaction? What is your assessment of that person? That they are a jerk, right? But they might not
be a jerk, it might be me! If you’re sitting at a green light, I’m gonna honk, cause we gotta go!
But we tend to assess a person’s character but is it possible that they are late to work for the 7th
time and their job might be a little bit tenuous and because of that, they are acting out of
character and trying to get there in a way that is offensive to you. Or maybe it is their anniversary
and they are fighting traffic to get to their reservation? Is it possible that there might be
situational factors that are contributing to that person’s behavior in that situation? Here’s the
trick, all of us want other people to give us the benefit of the doubt, don’t we? Give me the
benefit of the doubt, I’m just having a bad day. This isn’t normal for me. Cut me some slack. But
we don’t always want to give the other person the benefit of the doubt. But I’ve learned that
sometimes if you want to get it, you’ve got it give it. You’ve got to give that benefit of the doubt.
Here’s what I’m getting out – we tend to ignore situational forces that cause people to act out of
character.
Let me put some skin on it. A few years ago, I got a scathing email after one of my messages.
Someone ripped me and ripped my message to shreds. I thought it was a good message. It was
one of those days, I don’t feel this way every weekend, but I was like, I might have gotten saved
if I wasn’t already. It was one of those. I was feeling pretty good about it but then I got ripped
into and I was a little ticked off. This isn’t as easy as it looks. I thinking, what’s going on? I was
making an assessment of this person. Come to find out, for whatever reason, he copied his dad
on the email and his dad emails me directly and says, ‘I apologize on behalf of my son, what you
need to know is that not long ago, he had a tragic experience in his life where he lost a couple of
his friends and I think he doesn’t know how to process the emotions he is feeling towards that
and he is probably taking that out on you.’ My anger totally disappeared and it was totally
replaced with compassion for this kid. See, there were situational forces that were in play that
were affecting his behavior. What does that have to do with this Proverbs?
When it comes to sin, I think half the problem is the person. We are sinners saved by grace. I’ll
be the first person to say that I’m greedy and I get jealous and I have pride issues. I’ve gotten
angry one or twice. I have a sin nature. I’m human and so I’m not here to say that the problem is
the situation. I believe half the problem is the person. I also want to say, I don’t care what
situation you are in, there is never a rationalization or justification for sin. You are still
responsible, response-able, you are able to choose your response. By the way, it is much easier to
act like a Christian than it is to react like one, isn’t it? That’s where we are truly tested. So I think
half the problem is us. But I think sometimes, half the problem are these situations that we put
ourselves in, and that is where I’m praying God gives us some revelation, because I’m convinced
that some of you have struggled with sin for a long time and the Lord could set you free because
of a paradigm shift this weekend as you begin to see the situations that you are putting yourself
in that are leading you into temptation and into that sin.
When I was in grad school, I became fascinated with a psychologist by the name of Milton
Ericson. I read everything he wrote. He was quirky enough in the way he counseled people, it
was pretty amazing. So I read lots of stories about the way he counseled people, but here’s a
short story. I would say that his guiding principle was this, it might be worth jotting down, he
was really all about interrupting the pattern. In other words, let’s interrupt the pattern and see if
we can’t mix things up in a way that helps people deal with it. He was counseling one couple and
they were having some verbal communication issues. They were fighting a lot. He told them to
go ahead and keep fighting as much as they wanted to, but you have to fight in the shower fully
clothed. So every time you fight, you can’t do it anywhere, you need to go into the shower and
that’s where you are able to fight it out as much as you want. At some point, the absurdity of
where they were diffused the fighting they were having. In that way, he interrupted the pattern.
Here’s another example. He was counseling someone with some alcohol addiction issues and he
told them to drink as much as they wanted to but you can only drink at one bar, one particular
bar, and it was across town and you have to walk there and you can only order one drink at a
time. Then you can drink as much as you want to. So he was either going to get into really good
shape or it was going to interrupt that pattern somehow, someway. And that’s what it did.
Eventually he became tired of walking all the way across town. Here’s the funny thing. We do
this ourselves.
I remember when I was in junior high, I had a biting fingernail issue. So it was so bad, and I
played basketball and it was causing issues. So I started wearing fingernail polish! It was clear
but it was that nasty tasting stuff. I quickly overcame that problem by interrupting the pattern.
What am I talking about? Is that not what Solomon is doing here? This is so simple. Solomon
says, ‘Don’t go near the door of her house.’ Many another way of saying it is go out of your way
to stay away. Or here’s another translation, make it as inconvenient as possible. I think some of
us, one of the things we struggle with in our culture is that sin is so convenient. Especially in a
technology culture, it is a click away. So, in some ways, there are some challenges we face. How
do you stay way? I think you’ve got to make it more inconvenient and to be perfectly honest, it
might not be rocket science, you might need to cancel subscriptions, or change a TV package.
You need to take a step and literally, that one little interrupting of the pattern. There are things
you don’t need to have access to. It’s not that complicated but it is challenging but we’ve got to
find a way to put this principle into practice.
There are so many different traps and we don’t have time to talk about all of them. Financial
traps, especially in an economy, it’s easy, maybe some of you bought more house than you
should’ve, or some of you over-extended your credit and you are trapped by those monthly bills.
I understand what a heavy burden that can be. By the way, our Crown Financial group here at
NCC is a phenomenal tool. I think it could be a step towards managing your money and I think it
can help you get out of some of that. Is it going to be easy? No, and it’s probably going to take as
long to get out of your problem as it did to get into it. Here’s one great example of interrupting
the pattern. I read about a woman this week that decided to freeze her credit card in a block of
ice. That’s brilliant! So when she has the urge to spend, she has to let it thaw. If she still wants it
when it thaws, I guess she gets it, but I’m just envisioning lots of people with frozen credit cards.
You’ve got to interrupt the pattern.
I think all of us experience temptation on a consistent basis, but let me tell you the difference
between those who are successful dealing with it and those who are not. Those who aren’t
successful with it tend to make decisions in the heat of the moment, and those who are successful
make decisions long before that. Maybe here’s a way of saying it, you need to make wise
decisions when you are in a strong spiritual state. That’s when you need to make some
commitments and you need to establish some boundaries and that’s why sometimes we have you
raise your right hand and repeat after me. Why do we do that? If you don’t make a commitment,
you are much less likely to follow through. You’ve got to make some kind of commitment to
hold yourself accountable to it. I think of them as pre-decisions. You need to make decisions
before you get into those difficult situations.
Remember the story of Ulysses sailing by the coast of the sirens and the nymphs who had the
ability to charm everyone who heard their charms? Do you remember what Ulysses did? He told
the sailors to put wax in their ears, and then he told them to tie him to the mast of the ship so he
wouldn’t be tempted to steer it towards the coast. I love that story! I think it is so practical. For
starters, be careful little ears what you hear. There are moments when you need to put wax in
your ears. It is why, when my kids started downloading songs on ipods, we checked lyrics
because that stuff is getting into their auditory cortex and you’ve got to be a steward of that.
Those lyrics are sirens. I’m not trying to be all legalistic about it, but the truth is, you are sending
subliminal messages to your brain and no one can tell me differently that you aren’t affected by
that. So you’ve got to manage that. It’s not just about not listening to that but you need to fill
your spirit with positive lyrics and with messages that are building you up. I think that’s a critical
choice.
I think another lesson is precaution. The decision to avoid temptation altogether, what I’m saying
is that there are some measures you need to take. Are there some situations you are getting
yourself into and you don’t need to be going there? And then when it happens, you beat yourself,
how did that happen again? It’s because you let yourself get into that situation and you don’t
have the strength spiritually to resist that temptation. Like when I was playing basketball and I
sprained my ankle once, the rest of the season is a long season because once you sprain it once,
it’s easier to sprain to again and again. Spiritually, I think sometimes we sprain our spirits and
sometimes there is more of a tendency to fall into that same trap, and we have to be aware of that
and make some good decisions when we are in a strong state. Amen.
You can’t just stay out of tempting situations. I think you also need to put yourself in righteous
situations. Let’s keep reading. Verse 18, very interesting instructions to his sons
18 Let your wife be a fountain of blessing for you.
Rejoice in the wife of your youth.
19 She is a loving deer, a graceful doe.
Let me say that in this culture, likening your spouse to an animal was a compliment. Guys, if you
are going to attempt this, be careful my friend what animal you select. I would stay away from
the wildabeast.
19 She is a loving deer, a graceful doe.
Let her breasts satisfy you always.
Why don’t we read that one together! Ya know, there are parts of the Bible that you have to
laugh a little bit.
May you always be captivated by her love.
20 Why be captivated, my son, by an immoral woman,
or fondle the breasts of a promiscuous woman?
You can’t just play defense, you need a good offense. If you want to affair-proof your marriage,
so to speak, you’ve got to really work hard at your marriage so that it is strong. Can I say these
things? We talk about stuff that people don’t care about a lot and sometimes we don’t talk about
the stuff that we really ought to be talking about. Sex was God’s idea and it is his gift to a
husband and a wife to be enjoyed in the context of marriage and God wants that sexual
dimension of the relationship to be satisfying. That’s part of the equation here. I’m going to say
again, there is never an excuse for adultery. There is never an excuse to look anywhere else or go
anywhere else. But at the same time, we’ve got to work hard at cultivating strong relationships so
that it reduces some of that temptation to look in other places.
I think in the context of this Proverbs, one way of saying it is that the best defense is a good
offense. Cultivate a great marriage and that’s going to be a great defense against some of the
things you encounter. Here’s where I want to get into the sin nature a little bit, because I have a
feeling that the way I struggle with it is probably going to resonate with the way you struggle
with it. I’ve learned that when you try to not sin by not sinning, it doesn’t always go so well. It is
very difficult to not sin just by focusing on not sinning. In psychological terms, it’s called the
double-bind. Like if I tell you to be spontaneous, you can’t do it now can you? Because I told
you to be spontaneous. Sin is like that. It’s very difficult to stop sinning by not sinning. Paul is a
great example of that in Romans 7:15, I do not understand what I do, for what I do, I do not do,
but what I hate to do, for what I do is not the good I want to do, no, the evil I do not want to do,
this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it but it is sin
living in me that does it. Did you get that?
I’ve got to share this with our other locations. Pastor Mike, our new campus pastor at Ebenezers,
was sharing about her daughter, Micayla, who was taking a nap in their room this weekend and
there was crayon drawings on the wall and Mike went in and did a little bit of investigating and
asked Micayla if she did it. I love Micayla’s response, she said, “I’m learning not to do this.”
Sin is like that, we are learning not to do that. That is a tough battle.
Did you get one of these when you came in? Aren’t you glad you came to NCC this weekend?
You know what it is, a Chinese finger trap. I would recommend the index finger. Put it in there
like this and let’s escape that trap. You are so weak. Some of you are now breaking them. I think
the Chinese finger trap is an interesting analogy for sin because, in my experience, sometimes
the harder you try to get out, the tighter the sin seems to trap us and grip us. Is that not your
experience? In a sense, we sort of need to relax and then do this. Is anybody still stuck? Ushers,
let’s help them. I think sin is a lot like that. So let me move into the last part of this passage and
we will come in for a landing and this will make sense. I don’t think you can overcome sin by
just trying not to sin. I think you need an offense and I think we find it in verse 23. It’s the last
section of this Proverb. Verse 22
22 An evil man is held captive by his own sins;
they are ropes that catch and hold him.
23 He will die for lack of self-control;
he will be lost because of his great foolishness.
So we get to the very end of this Proverb and we encounter this idea of self-control. What
Solomon is saying is if you don’t have self-control, it can kill you. Let me flip the coin and on a
more positive note, Proverbs 16:32, this is worth memorizing, I thought about this all week.
There was one day when I needed extra patience and because I had come across this verse, it
really helped me. Proverbs 16:32
It is better to be patient than powerful.
I love the Bible. It is better to be patient than powerful. It is better to have self-control than to
conquer a city. So, some of us are in these situations that we’ve gotten ourselves into and what
do we do? How do we cultivate the self-control to get out of those situations? There is no easy
solution but the Proverbs place a premium on self-control. I want to talk about it because we talk
about the word but do we really know what it means and how it works? I don’t know that we do.
This week, I read an interesting study involving college students who were presented with a
series of puzzles and they were asked to complete them. They were given as many tries as they
wanted. What they didn’t know was that the puzzles were insolvable and the researchers just
wanted to see how long they would try to solve this thing before they quit. But that study was
preceded by another study that the participants thought was totally unrelated, but it wasn’t. It was
a case study. The students were told to not eat for three hours and they showed up and went into
a room where the researchers had put some freshly baked chocolate chip cookies, and the aroma
was filling the room and next to that plate of warm cookies was a bowl of radishes. The
participants were broken into two groups. Half of them were offered a couple of cookies and
then they went to try to solve the puzzles. The other group had to smell the cookies and eat the
radishes and then they went and worked on the puzzles. Here’s what is interesting, the radish
eaters were less persistent. They gave up after about eight minutes. Those who ate the cookies
lasted twice as long. The conclusion – eat more cookies! That may be true, but this is fascinating
to me because I’ve never really dissected self-control, but here’s what the researchers believed
happened, those who ate the radishes ran out of self-control quicker because they had already
exercised some self-control in not eating the cookies but eating the radishes. The researchers said
self-control is exhaustible. There is not this endless supply, it is like a muscle, if you get on a
bench press and you start working out, the first few reps are easy because your muscles aren’t
fatigued, then you get to the tenth rep and you are feeling weak and you cannot bench press one
more. Self-control is like that. When you exercise self-control, it begins to deplete. Parents, you
know what I’m talking about. Have you ever had this deal, hypothetically of course, where you
get really angry about something small? And it’s like, why would I get that disproportionately
upset over this little thing? I promise you that some other things happened during the day that
depleted self-control because of anger or some other emotion and put you in a place where the
straw broke the camel’s back and before you knew it, and that’s why some of us give in to the
littlest temptations, because we’ve already depleted our self-control because of the situations
we’ve put ourselves in and we just don’t have much left to draw on. Then it’s a mystery to us.
But there are ways to interrupt this pattern. I think it is true relationally. When we were in a life
stage where Lora was home with our three little kids and I was working, what we learned is this,
there were some days, if I had a really stressful day or a tough day, sometimes I would need ten
minutes to decompress then I would be of so much more value to the family. Then there were
days where it was like Mark to the rescue, Superdad, and I just needed to get on the floor and
wrestle with the kids because Lora so desperately needed a break, because either I was out of
self-control or she was out of self-control. I think what we’ve got to do is examine and evaluate
ourselves.
So maybe the question is this – how do we fuel self-control? Granted, let’s not go near her door.
Let’s stay out of those situations, let’s interrupt the pattern. But how do you fuel self-control to
resist temptation? Here’s where I get as basic as you can possibly get. I’ve learned that when I
pray, I am more patient. There was a day this week where one of our children nurtured patience
in my life. And I had prayed for them during the day, and listen, 9 times out of 10, I am beating
myself up because I fail the patience test, so I’m not up here saying here’s how you do it every
time because I mess up more than anybody else, but this was one of those days where it was a
revelation, I was praying for them today. I was remarkable patient and I didn’t let it get to me. I
think prayer and patience are proportionate. If you want some self-control, you better have a
prayer life.
I think the second simple observation is that when I read the Bible, somehow it strengths my
spiritual resolve, my self-control. As I read Scripture, it fuels me, it feeds my spirit to become
more like Christ and I see some of the sacrifices He made and it begins to challenge me and I
want to live up to the standards that have been set for me.
Maybe this is the last one because of time. I’ve learned that when I’m aware of God’s grace, I
tend to be more graceful. I believe that grace can keep you out of situations. But I also want to
say to those of you who are here this weekend and you love all the talk about prevention, but are
already in the situation. You are already trapped by my anger or my pride has put me in a
situation where my poor financial management has me stuck here. What do you? Listen, I want
to tell you that the grace of God is not only the thing that is the best prevention to keep you out
of those situations, grace is the only thing that will get you out of them as well. If you keep
trying to pull that Chinese finger trap apart with your own strength, it isn’t going to work. There
comes a moment where you need to relax. Relax the trap and then you are freed from it. If you
have not experienced the grace of God in your life, how stressed are you? You must be really
stressed out. But you don’t need to be because the grace of God is what God does for us that we
cannot do for ourselves. I promise you, He wants to set you free. He wants to set you free and the
way that happens is simply by receiving his grace. Here’s a beautiful promise, where sin
abounds, grace does much more abound.
So whatever situation you find yourself in this weekend, I hope you do a little bit of examination.
How do we stay out of those situations? How do you interrupt the patterns in our own lives?
How do we just stay out of trouble? Those things will serve you well. They are little things but
they will make a big difference. Then, how do I receive the grace of God? It is freely offered and
it is unconditional. In other words, it doesn’t matter what situation you are in, God wants to grace
you. All you need to do is simply ask for it and receive it.
Lord, right now we come to You and we ask for that grace, that amazing grace, God we need it
and we thank You that your grace is enough. Your grace is enough no matter what challenge or
what situation we are in, Lord we receive it. God I pray that this weekend those who need to feel
challenged would feel challenged and would make some changes in their patterns and in their
situations that they find themselves in, and Lord those that maybe just need the comfort of your
grace, God would You grace us right now and would You help us know that no matter how deep
the problems seem to be and no matter how trapped we seem to be, that there is a God who is
infinitely bigger than the problems we find ourselves in. God we believe that You are the
solution and we believe that your grace can sustain us in any situation and it’s also the thing that
can deliver us from it. Lord for that, we give You thanks this weekend, in Jesus’ name, Amen.