Myth 1 - I Would Never Do That

In the year 1492, when Columbus “sailed the ocean blue”, he was operating under a false assumption. People nowadays think that the people of the 15^(th) century believed that the world was flat. That is not true. Most educated people in Columbus’ day understood that the world was round; that it was a globe. What they didn’t know was exactly how big it was, and how much of it was covered by oceans.

Columbus believed that the globe was about 1/3 smaller than it actually is. Because of that assumption, he became convinced that it would be shorter, quicker, and easier to sail west around the globe to the Orient than get there by sailing East. He felt that the distance going west from Spain to Japan was only 2,400 miles. So, armed with this assumption—which he backed up with detailed calculations—he succeeded in persuading the King of Spain to bankroll an expedition.

When he set out from Spain, Columbus had absolutely no clue…

1. how wide the Atlantic Ocean really was…

2. that there was an enormous landmass – the Americas – that blocked his pathway to the Orient…

3. that there was an even bigger ocean—the Pacific—to get across

When Columbus finally sighted the islands of the Caribbean, all of his assumptions convinced him that he had arrived in the Far East. But in reality, he was completely and utterly lost. The Admiral of the Ocean Seas was actually 10,000 miles away from where he thought he was! All because he started out with some wrong assumptions.

In the same way, if we push our little boats out onto the sea of life with false assumptions, we’re going to find ourselves lost, too. And believe me, there are a lot of false assumptions that we can hold about life.

Over the next few weeks, I’d like us to consider some of these false assumptions that throw us off course. I’m going to call them myths, because a myth is a story that pretends to explain reality. A myth is a story that sounds reasonable or plausible. It may seem to be true; it probably resembles what we would like to be true. But ultimately, a myth is false; it is inherently misleading.

There are many such myths, or misconceptions, that we hold about life. These myths lead us to false expectations about what life is like and how it is supposed to work. These myths lead us to make certain assumptions about ourselves, about other people, or even about God, and what He is like.

And if we operate on the basis that these myths are true—if we begin to build our lives on them and take our compass headings from them—then we will surely wander far off course.

So what I want to do with you over the next few weeks is to think about some of these myths. Why do we believe them? Where do they lead us? And how they stack up with what the Bible says to be true about life?

The first myth that I want to examine with you today is a myth that we hold about ourselves. Virtually every one of us, at some point or at some time, actively buys into this myth. Many of us continue to do so, even after we become followers of Jesus Christ.

Let me introduce this myth by telling you a true story…

About three years ago, I preached in a church just outside of New York City. While I was there, I met a family that was going through a terrible tragedy. A man had three daughters. He and the girls’ mother had divorced several years, and the man had since remarried. This man and his second wife had just recently begun attending the church where I was preaching and I met them that Sunday.

The man’s daughters were now teenagers, and two of them were with him at the service. But just the week before, the middle daughter—17 years old—had been killed under tragic circumstances. She had actually been murdered by her mother.

The mother had begun to practice some rather bizzarre religious beliefs, and she had become convinced that her 17-year old daughter was demon-possessed. So she tried to cast the demons out of the girl. She tied her down, stuffed pillows and blankets over her face to stifle her screams, and in the process, she suffocated her daughter to death. The youngest daughter watched it all happen.

A terrible tragedy, a terrible evil had operated through that mother. I do not know the outcome of this case, but undoubtedly, that mother is now either in prison or in a psychiatric facility. And I’m sure that she must be haunted by what she did.

When we hear stories like this, we quite naturally tend to be shocked. We recoil from such terrible expressions of evil, and we react in a particular way. We say to ourselves “How could that woman have done that? How could any mother ever do such a thing to her own daughter?”

But then in the next breath, and perhaps on a subconscious level, we put moral distance between ourselves and the person who did such a great wrong, and we find ourselves saying or thinking: “I could never see myself doing a thing like that.”

And when we arrive at that conclusion, we have bought into the first myth that we hold about ourselves. This myth is that, while other people may commit evil deeds, I myself am not really capable of doing anything that is truly wicked. I could never, under any circumstances, do such a thing.

Now we all recognize in ourselves some minor flaws and defects. We call them personality quirks or weaknesses. We say “Oh I’m Irish, so I’ve got a temper. Or I’m Russian, so naturally, I have this stubborn streak.” But we tend to dismiss these personal failings in the belief that, when all is said and done, we are basically good, decent, honest people. In fact, we’re actually quite nice folks after all and, especially as Christians, we act as though God certainly made a wise choice when he brought us onto his team.

I say that, because oddly enough, this myth tends to be quite prevalent among evangelicals. As evangelical Christians, we believe in the doctrine of the total depravity of man; the doctrine that says that man is inherently evil and is incapable of true righteousness in God’s eyes. This is what we say we believe the Bible teaches.

It’s just that, when you get right down to it, we have a hard time seeing how that doctrine applies to us personally. And this is where we are myth-led. This is where our moral compass is out of kilter. We think of ourselves as basically nice, upright people. But C.S. Lewis said, “Until a person finds evil unmistakably present in his existence… he is enclosed in an illusion.”

You see, there are only two kinds of people in the world – those who are sinners and know it, and those who are sinners and either cannot or will not admit it to themselves.

Jesus tells us a vivid story about these two categories of people. Please turn to Luke 18:9. It’s a story about a Pharisee and a tax collector:

To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable:

Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’

But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’ “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.

How did the Pharisee come into the presence of God? Did he regard himself to be a sinner? No. Oh, I’m sure that the man would have been willing to admit to some small sins of a minor nature, but on the whole, it seems he was quite impressed with his own moral standing. You can tell that because of the way he compares himself with others.

He says “God, I thank you that I am not like other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers, or even like that tax collector over there. I would never do the kinds of things that those people do. I am not like them in any way. No, on the whole, I’m okay. In fact, I’m better than okay: I fast, not once but twice a week, and I tithe on my income. God, you should be proud of me.” That was his attitude.

And I wonder if that might not be the attitude of many typical evangelical Christians today? “God, here I am in church again. See how good I am? My life is in order. I am successful, responsible, dignified, and an upstanding member of the community. I pay my taxes and I give to the church. I love my wife and kids and I don’t swear, or do drugs, or have other bad habits. Aren’t you proud of me, God?”

I daresay that this kind of thinking on the part of Christians is what has turned many people away from the church.

But look at the tax collector in Jesus’ story. What was his attitude? He was so acutely aware of his own sinfulness in the presence of God that he stood at a distance. He could not even bring himself to look up to heaven to pray. He beat his breast in anguish, and he said, “God, have mercy on me, because I’m a sinner.”

To whom did God listen? Who did God honor? Who did God justify? He justified that tax collector – the man who recognized his own sinfulness, the very man who was condemned by that religious Pharisee.

Have you noticed the kind of people Jesus hung out with in the Gospels? He spent time with the tax-collectors, the prostitutes, the people who were collectively labelled “sinners” by the religious crowd.

Why? What is going on there? It is because the sinners were the only people who hadn’t bought into this myth of their own righteousness. They knew that they were sinners. They knew that they didn’t deserve to be in the presence of God. They knew that they had a fundamental problem with their own character. They knew that their lives were broken and needed fixing, and Jesus knew that they knew.

Luke 5:29-31 Then Levi held a great banquet for Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating with them. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect complained to his disciples, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and ‘sinners’?” Jesus answered them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”

When people are diagnosed with a terminal disease – let’s say cancer – there are several stages that they go through as they come to grips with that diagnosis. The first stage is denial. They simply deny that the diagnosis is correct.

Guess what? In spiritual terms, that’s how most of the human race has reacted to God’s diagnosis of our sin problem. We say “I don’t really have a sin problem. I’m not a sinner. I’m basically a nice person. Other people may be evil and wicked, but I’m not.” We’re in denial – and many of us never get beyond that stage. The Bible points this out…

1John 1:8, 10

If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we claim we have not sinned, we make God out to be a liar.

But 1 John 1:9 says…

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.

It is only when we come to stand in the sandals of the tax collector – where we recognize the potential of evil, and the reality of evil within us—its constant presence; its pernicious pull on our character and influence on our behavior—only then can God do anything for us.

We need to remember the Gospel of grace. Jesus did not come here to make good people better; nice people nicer. He didn’t come to help us make some cosmetic improvements to our lives. He came to earth because we were dead in our trespasses and sins. He came because we were, and are, totally depraved. He came because “There is none righteous; not even one.”

He died on the cross because we are wicked. And if that rubs you the wrong way, then that’s too bad! Maybe you’re still in denial.

Only when we come to realize our own moral bankruptcy are we ready to come to grips with the Gospel of grace. Only when a church recognizes that people in general, including the people IN the church, are sinners can that church be trusted to accurately present that Gospel of grace.

And the realization that we are sinners needs to be an ongoing realization because the sin problem doesn’t go away when you become a Christian. Our positive tendency toward evil doesn’t disappear, because we still have a sinful nature operating within us. And only the ongoing grace of God enables us to deal with it.

The moment we forget that fact, we are in deadly danger. This can be a devastating trap for Christians—especially for those who have been Christians for some time. We begin to forget that we ourselves are sinners in need of a daily infusion of God’s grace. We begin to think that we have grown beyond the need for God’s basic grace. We begin to compare ourselves, either subtly or not so subtly, with others.

Thomas a Kempis said “It will not hurt you at all to consider yourself less righteous than others, but it will be disastrous for you to consider yourself better than even one person.”

When we consider ourselves to be better than anyone else, we are just proving what sinners we are.

Did you know that there is a very reliable indicator of how much progress we are making spiritually? It is how we react when we are confronted with the sinful deeds of another person. If we recoil in horror and ostracize the sinner – if we cluck our tongues in judgment and react with harsh condemnation – we are simply revealing our own spiritual pride and immaturity.

Oswald Chambers put it well: “When a moral person is confronted with immorality, he is so repulsed by the offense that he turns away and in despair closes his heart to the offender.”

The Prodigal Son’s proud brother did exactly that. When the Prodigal Son returned home, repentant, the proud brother refused to accept him. Even though his father went to the older brother and pled with him to come back into fellowship with his younger brother, he refused. He just couldn’t get past his brother’s sin, and so he couldn’t love the sinner.

And he couldn’t get past the sin because he didn’t really regard himself as a sinner like his brother. He was just as much a sinner as his wayward brother, only he didn’t recognize it in himself. His sin was the sin of pride and stubbornness. On the outside, he may have conformed to his father’s wishes, but on the inside, he was cultivating a cold, proud, bitter heart.

How do you react when you open your newspaper and read of some crime that has been committed? Does your heart break, not only for the victim, but also for the one whose sinful heart led him to do such a thing?

How do you react when you hear of the failure of a fellow Christian – perhaps a high profile Christian leader – whose sin has been found out? Is your reaction to distance yourself from that person? To condemn that person? Or is it to reach out to that person with the healing, restorative grace of God?

Jeremiah 17:9 is a verse we should think about every day …

The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it? (or as the NIV says: Who can understand it?) Who can understand the wickedness of the human heart?

The Bible says that all of us have that kind of heart within us. Our sinfulness may be overt like the Prodigal Son. Or it may be covert, like the Proud Brother. But it’s there. It’s a fact. And the sooner we take ownership of that fact, the better we will be able to appreciate what God is trying to do with us and for us in Christ.

We need to get rid of this myth that we are basically nice people. We aren’t. We are sinners. There’s a ravenous tiger crouched within our hearts waiting to pounce. And the person who knows that about himself, and is vigilant, and who seeks to depend on the grace of God so that he will not be devoured by that tiger, is the only person you can trust.

Author Philip Yancey tells the story of how he had the opportunity of staying with an Amish family near Lancaster, PA. During the course of their conversation, these Amish folk described to him the process by which their church would choose a pastor.

As a rule, few Amish men receive an education beyond the 8^(th) grade, and almost none of them have any theological training.

The entire congregation would get together and vote for any men they felt had pastoral potential. Those men who received at least three votes would move forward to sit at a table. Each man would be given a hymnbook, and inside that randomly chosen hymnbook, one of the men would find a card designating him to be the new pastor for the coming year.

Yancey asked his friends “What it the man selected doesn’t feel qualified?”

The Amish family paused for a moment and replied “If he DID feel qualified, we wouldn’t want him.”

That’s kind of the how we need to understand our own sinfulness and God’s grace. If we somehow get to the place in our lives where we feel qualified, or worthy, or deserving of God’s grace, then we’ve just proved that we don’t understand the first thing about ourselves or about grace.

The only way to get your feet on the ground spiritually is to become conscious of your own moral and spiritual brokenness—to know the true state of your heart.

Only then can you appreciate the grace of God.

You don’t know just how far away from home I’ve been

She said as she looked into my eyes.

Could it be I’ve strayed beyond mercy’s outstretched hand

And now his grace no longer stoops to hear my cry?

You see, I just want to know—Tell me how far will He go?

Will He still reach to me in spite of where I’ve been?

And I told her…

He’ll do whatever, whatever it takes

His grace reaches lower than your worst mistake

And His love will run farther than you can run away, my friend

He’ll do whatever, whatever it takes

He’ll do whatever it takes.

I’ve heard his love is patient, that he always hears a prayer

And that his love will follow you despite the miles.

My best years in life I wasted, why would he even really care?

What have I to give that he would find worthwhile?

You see, I just want to know—Tell me how far will he go?

Will He still reach to me in spite of who I am?

Let me tell you…

He’ll do whatever, whatever it takes

His grace reaches lower than your worst mistake

And His love will run farther than you can run away, my friend

He’ll do whatever, whatever it takes

He’ll do whatever it takes.

He’ll just keep reaching until he finds

The way to bring you back where you belong…Come on back home