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Staying
Sober in an Addictive World |
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A Pocket Paper Robert J.
Morgan This is going to be a great week for all the so-called “Ditto-heads” in America, because it’s been announced that Rush Limbaugh is returning to his radio broadcast tomorrow. He’s the most listened-to talk show host in America, but he has been sidelined for the last month, in re-hab, battling an addiction to pain killers. He’s just the most recent in a long line of American celebrities who have announced they are battling various addictions. This week the popular singer Courtney Love was in a Los Angeles courtroom on drug possession charges asking the judge to send her to drug rehabilitation instead of to jail. Her late husband, Kurt Cobain, committed suicide became of his addiction to heroin. We read in the newspaper this week that country singer Wynonna Judd was charged with driving under the influence after a city police officer stopped her speeding Land Rover not far from Music Row. As we’re beginning to wrap up our topical messages for this fall on the issues we face as Christians today in America, I’d like to devote a message to the subject of addictive disorders. I’ve heard psychologists say that we are the most addictive prone society in history. The mobility of our population, the break-up of the family, the loss of spiritual roots, the entertainment orientation of our culture—all this sets us up for addictive disorders. And there is a wide variety of addictions that can draw us into bondage. Alcoholism is one. It’s epidemic in our society. Drug addiction is another. Ditto smoking. The first person whose death I ever witnessed was a man who had spent his entire life smoking. It had given him lung cancer, and his death was a horrible thing to observe. But what I remember most clearly about it was that as soon as he passed away, his son, who had been with us at his bedside, went out and lit a cigarette. And then there are all kinds of sex addictions and pornographic addictions. Some suffer from gambling addictions. We’re about to see more and more of that in our state of Tennessee as Rebecca Paul and her dubious friends from Georgia come up here and earn their hundreds of thousands of dollars at our expense. I’ve read that gambling addictions occur more quickly than other addictions. I don’t know if that’s true, but I do know that in states that allow casino gambling, the casinos send buses to the retirement homes and to senior citizen centers on the day after social security checks arrive. They bus these seniors to their dens of iniquity, and wine them and dine them, then they put them in front of their slot machines and rob them of their social security checks. And nobody seems to say a thing about it. I don’t understand it. We are a nation in the grip of scores of life-altering, self-destructive addictions. For this sermon, I’d like to define an addiction in this way: An addiction is any kind of self-destructive pattern in your life that is difficult to control. Now, I want to issue a caveat here at the beginning of the message. I am not a psychologist or a trained therapist. That’s not my role. I’m a pastor, a Bible student, and a theologian. And I start with a basic biblical premise: All our problems have spiritual roots. Now, if a psychologist or a trained counselor were asked to speak today on this issue, they would take a totally different approach, and they would say some very, very useful things. I’m not disputing the wise advice of a godly counselor. I’m just saying that I’m going to approach this subject like I approach every subject. I like to ask the question: “What does the Bible say about this?” And I think we can find a lot of answers to that question in the book of Romans. Romans is the Bible’s premier theology book. It’s the letter that Paul sent to the church at Rome in order to leave with them—the central church of the Roman Empire—a copy of His systematic teachings about justification by faith. But Romans isn’t just a theology book. It is enormously practical. It tells us how to live. And it tells us how to deal with addictive disorders. Look at this passage, for example, in chapter 6: What then?
Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? Certainly not! Do you not know that to whom you present
yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one’s slaves whom you obey,
whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to
righteousness? But God be thanked
that though you were slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that form
of doctrine to which you were delivered. And having been set free from sin,
you became slaves of righteousness.
I speak in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you presented your members
as slaves of uncleanness, and of lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so
now present your members as slaves of righteousness for holiness. For when you were slaves of sin, you
were free in regard to righteousness.
What fruit did you have then in the things of which you are now
ashamed? For the end of those things
is death. But now having been set
free from sin, and having become slaves of God, you have your fruit to
holiness, and the end, everlasting life.
For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in
Christ Jesus our Lord. This is one of the best passages in the entire Bible as it relates to our subject today. In summary, we can say that this passage teaches us four things about addictions: First, addiction is a form of
spiritual slavery. Look at verse
16: Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey,
you are that one’s slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to
death, or of obedience leading to righteousness? I have a theory about addictions. I believe that our enemy, that old serpent, Lucifer, the Devil, wants to destroy us. But he is so evil that he gets sadistic pleasure in manipulating us into destroying ourselves. If there is anything he loves more than the destruction of a human life, it is the self-destruction of a human life. And addiction is a form of spiritual slavery in which we destroy ourselves. That leads to the second truth
about addiction in these verses:
Addiction brings shame and death.
Verse 21 says: What fruit did you have then in the things
of which you are now ashamed? For
the end of those things is death. Many people in this room know what it’s like to live in fear for the life of someone we love who is in the grips of an addiction. How tragic it is when one of our precious loved ones is lost because of a self-destructive addiction. It may be a slow death such as comes from the lung cancer of a smoking addiction; or it might come in the sudden destruction of an alcohol-related car crash. But addiction is a form of spiritual slavery that brings shame and death. But the third truth about
addiction in these verses is a surprising one: The power of addiction is broken by
doctrine. Look at verse 17: But
God be thanked that though you were slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from the
heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered. The word “form” comes from the Greek word tupos, meaning type. It was the idea of something stamped. Have you seen a man take a hammer and a metal rod bearing an insignia on the end and with a mighty blow he stamps the insignia on a metal plate? That’s the idea. It has to do with something that is indelibly and indestructibly written or posted or stamped. The word “doctrine”
is the word didacha, the Greek word
for teaching. So Paul is telling
us here that there exists a truth or a teaching that has the power to break
the cycle of sin and addiction that makes us destroy ourselves. What is this truth? What is this teaching? It’s the truth and the teaching
of the book of Romans. We have it
summarized for us in the last verse of our passage: For
the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ
Jesus our Lord. As Charles Wesley put it: He breaks the power of cancelled sin And sets the prisoner free: His blood can make the foulest clean, His blood availed for me. I have based my life and my ministry on the proposition that Jesus Christ is Lord, and that He has the power to cleanse and to cure us of the tyranny of Satan and sin. The fourth truth is this: We must deliberately choose to live in
that freedom. That’s
Paul’s primary point in this paragraph. Look at verse 19: I
speak in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. In other words, he is saying,
“I know you are human beings, and we human beings have trouble grasping
divine truth, so I’m using an analogy here and framing this in terms of
slaves and masters.” I speak in human terms because of the
weakness of your flesh: Just as
you presented your members as slaves of uncleanness, and of lawlessness
leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves of righteousness
for holiness. This is the primary emphasis of
chapters 6, 7, and 8 of Romans.
Just because we have come to Christ for salvation doesn’t mean
we’re going to experience consistent victory over sin. Paul was concerned that there were
Christians who were officially now serving Christ but were, in practical
terms, still serving sin. Look at
the way he began the chapter: What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace
may abound? Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live in
it any longer? Verse 11: Likewise
reckon yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our
Lord. Therefore do not let sin
reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. And do not present your members as
instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being
alive for the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to
God. For sin shall not have
dominion over you, for you are not under the law but under grace. In other words, it takes an intentional effort on our parts to live consistently in the victory Christ as provided. We must make up our minds that having received Jesus Christ as our Savior, we are going to live with Him. We must learn to break the addictive patterns and become slaves of righteousness through the power that He provides. Now, with that as background, what can we tell someone who is wanting to overcome an addiction in life? As I read again through the book of Romans on this issue, I’d like to share with you twelve steps to victory. This is the Romans version of the famous 12-step program.
And the God of peace will crush Satan
under your feet shortly. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with
you. Amen. Copyright StatementWe grant permission for any edition of The Pocket Paper to be photocopied for use in a local congregation or classroom, provided no more than 1,000 copies are made, the material is distributed free, and the copies include the notice: "Copyright (year) The Donelson Fellowship."For any other use, advance permission must be obtained from The Donelson Fellowship church office. |
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