Breaking the Law and Broken Lives

 

In the Old Testament we find the fascinating story of the nation of Israel.  At the beginning of the book of Exodus they are enslaved in the nation of Egypt.  Through many signs and wonders the Lord delivers them and they walk free into the wilderness.

Moses, their fearless leader (well maybe not fearless, but pretty close) was summoned by God to climb up Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments.  He was up there forty days or so, and during that time the people became frightened and confused.  They called out to Aaron, Moses' brother, to make them an idol.  So, as the story goes, Aaron crafted a golden calf, and they began to worship this idol instead of the one true God who had delivered them from Pharaoh and his armies.

The nation of Israel had taken their eyes off of the Lord.  They determined that they could decide for themselves what was true and false, and what was right and wrong.  "We don't need God!  We have this idol!  We have it all figured out!" they said.  In their worship of the idol, they gave themselves over to illicit and unclean behaviors.  Exodus 32:6 says this, "And they rose up early on the morrow, and offered burnt offerings, and brought peace offerings: and the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play."  They forgot God and let their own appetites and sense of self-determination decide what was true and false.  They rejected their purpose as the people of God and instead gave themselves to play.  They traded worship of the one true God for pointless pleasures.  They turned away from Divine revelation and instead settled for their own wisdom and skill to determine good and evil.

Fast-forward a couple hundred years and we catch up with Israel occupying the Promise Land and being ruled by Judges - informal religious and political leaders like Gideon, Samson, and Samuel.  An interesting verse appears a few times throughout the book, “In those days there was no king in Israel, but every man did that which was right in his own eyes." (Judges 17:6)

They had no king, no authority over them to set the law and enforce it.  No one to tell them what to do.  Without this hierarchy, every person was deciding for himself what was right and wrong.  They had forgotten God's holy laws in pursuit of their own whims.  Once again, the nation of Israel had turned from the God who had set them free to worship idols and follow the practices of the heathen nations around them.  They were listening to their hearts, their feelings, and intuitions to determine their ethical boundaries.  Inevitably this led them into sin and bondage.

The Apostle Paul in the New Testament picks up this theme in Romans 1.  He describes in fuller detail the moral decline we just saw with the nation of Israel.  

    18.  For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness;

    19.  Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them.

    20.  For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:

    21.  Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.

    22.  Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,

    23.  And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things.

    24.  Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonor their own bodies between themselves:

    25.  Who changed the truth of God into a lie and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.

Paul goes on to condemn homosexuality in the next verses, then in verse 28, "And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient;"

All this sounds eerily familiar to me.

Do you see the process here?  We receive the truth from God, we can see the truth of God from nature, and He has written His laws in our hearts.  We accept Him, serve Him, and love Him, but then something shifts.  We fail to worship and serve the Lord as we should.  Our gratitude for all His wonderful works fades as we allow ourselves to be distracted with worldly things.  We become vain in our imaginations.  "Vain" gives this idea of something that is worthless, empty, or futile.  Our thinking becomes worthless.  Instead of our minds wandering in the lofty grandeur of the greatness and beauty of God, they wallow in the dust and mud of worldly things.

If this process is unchecked, inevitably we turn aside to idols.  Certainly, we are more sophisticated these days.  We don't worship Zeus or Odin (well, most of us don't), but we worship our cell phones, televisions, cars, and jobs.  We might not pledge loyalty to Aphrodite or Shiva, but we pledge loyalty to ideas.  We are loyal to ideas like evolution, environmentalism, Black Lives Matter, and the LGBTQ movement, and we pursue them with religious fervor while our fervor for Christ fades and eventually disappears.

As a society, each of us is doing what we think is right in our own mind, and God is forgotten, or substituted with an idol.  We make him into some passive, beneficent deity who's only concern is our happiness.  "God just wants me to be happy."

I have seen this in my addiction, this tendency to warp reality to suit my needs.  This is usually called denial.  I crafted lies in my heart and mind that allowed me to continue to act out despite the destruction and chaos it was wreaking in my life.  I forgot God, only for a time, and indulged in my selfish lusts.  Instead of worshipping God, I worshipped pornography and it came to enslave me and destroy me.

Though my denial never led me to declare that porn was a good thing in the light of day, as many in our culture do today, still, in darkness of isolation, I behaved otherwise.  This is the puzzle of compulsive, addictive behavior.  We behave in ways contrary to our values and continue to indulge in behaviors even when the consequences leave our lives in shambles.

We live in a society where we have chosen to throw off God's laws and make our own selves into the ultimate authority of what is right and wrong, and God has given us over to our own unclean imaginations.  There is destruction and wrath to come, as though a pandemic and rioting in the streets are not evidence enough.

Let's imagine for a minute that one morning, at random, I decide that I can fly.  I find my red cape, put my underpants on the outside of my pants, climb up onto the roof of my two-story dorm, cry out, "Up! Up! And away!" and leap with all my might into the air.

What do you think will happen to me?

No doubt, I will fall to the ground and hurt myself, if I survive such at all.

I cannot defy the law of gravity.  No matter how intelligent, educated, and strong I am, I cannot fly under my own power.  I may say, "The law of gravity does not apply to me.  It might be good for you and those people over there, but I'm fine without it!"  But if I attempt to break the law of gravity, in the end, it will be the law of gravity that breaks me.

God's laws are like the law of gravity, if we defy his laws, in the end it will not be God's laws that will be broken. It will be God's laws that break us.