sermonette: A More Excellent Way

Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Given 16-Nov-96; Sermon #264s; 26 minutes

Description: (show)

We live in a world of constant advertising. We just heard in the last week or so about some of the ways advertisers get at us. If we take a step back and just observe the volume of sales pitches we get through TV, radio, magazines, newspapers, direct mail, catalogs, door to door sales, telephone solicitations, billboards, flyers, bulletin boards, fax ads (which I think are illegal now), and Internet ads, stitch-ins, blow-ins, you name it, it is absolutely ridiculous. We are just constantly bombarded with advertisements and advertising.

I recently heard on a TV show that showed you the best commercials of 1996 that the average American sees between 200 and 250 TV commercials—a day! This does not count the billboards, the radio, the newspapers, magazines. You think about it—four commercials every eight minutes for seven hours, which is roughly the average watching time of the average American. Do the math: It comes up right around somewhere between 200 and 250 commercials. It is astounding!

And what is the common theme of most of them? “This product is better than all the rest! New and improved! (Well, why did they not make it good in the first place?) Better stain removing formula! More horsepower! Better handling! Smoother ride! More room, more comfort! Better mileage! Better price!” The common theme is, “Mine is better than yours.” The American way in itself is bigger and better; onward and upward.

But why does not this concept of improvement, of betterment, of excellence—which is a godly principle; God does not want us to stay in first gear all the time—why does that not translate into our spiritual lives? Why are we so content with, “just as I am without one plea?” Why do we think that God will just accept any old thing? Why are our efforts so lackadaisical so often when it comes to doing better for God, or with God?

As I began thinking about this subject, I began to try to turn it inward on myself a little bit. I do not want to always be preaching at you, I want to be preaching to myself as well. But I noticed that I spend huge amounts of time and effort trying to improve our computer software at work in just one little area. Or I may spend hours a week reviewing new software, or looking in catalogs for good prices, or seeing what new things the companies have come up with in their latest upgrades.

And it does not stop with software. I am also looking at hardware, and as I mentioned a few weeks ago, we are looking at a network around the office, and that requires time. But what it is, is I am spending this time trying to improve. But it is a very physical thing.

I spend a lot of time doing it, and we need to do it. But I was just trying to see how much effort do I put into that without putting an equal or more effort into what I should be doing spiritually? Why do I not take large chunks of time to evaluate where I am, and where I need to be, and take steps to go from here to there? Why am I satisfied with the way I am, when I know that I could do quite a lot better?

But you know what? (I began to think about this more deeply.) God advertises that His way is better. He is the best advertiser there ever was. He raised up a pretty good advertiser to get us to open our eyes to the truth. He chose a man out of advertising—a man who knew how to make things leap out of a page at you. And you know, even though God is such a great advertiser, we do not buy it most of the time, which is mind boggling. It is not that His ways of advertising are bad, not in the least. I just told you He is the best advertiser there ever was.

Look at the creation that He made. Nothing has ever been made even out of 24 million colors on a computer screen that can compare with the great huge planet-wide billboard that He made to say, “Look, I created this place!”

But have you ever heard the line, “You get what you pay for?” When God advertises, and we do not buy His products, the reason is that the price is too high (in our mind). Why does not everybody in this room drive a Cadillac? It is the best, supposedly, or a Lexus, or whatever you think is the best car out there? The price is too high. You would have to give up too much to buy that item. Most of us do not want to pay the price that God says you have to pay to get what He is advertising.

Let us go to Deuteronomy 30 to start. We all know this section of scripture very well.

Deuteronomy 30:15-19 “See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil, in that I command you today to love the LORD your God, to walk in His ways, and to keep His commandments, His statutes, and His judgments, that you may live and multiply; and the LORD your God will bless you in the land which you go to possess. But if your heart turns away so that you do not hear, and are drawn away, and worship other gods and serve them, I announce to you today that you shall surely perish; you shall not prolong your days in the land which you cross over the Jordan to go in and possess. I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live.”

That is God's sales pitch right there in a nutshell.

“My way is better than your way. My way is life, and blessing. Your way is death, and cursing. Which one are you going to choose? Oh, and by the way, the small print is, you have to love Me. You have to walk in My ways. And also, there is one more thing here: You have to keep My commandments, My statutes, and My judgments.” And most of us turn around and say, I am going to another salesman.

Satan, on the other hand, is really slick.

“Look, I’ll give you all these things. It doesn’t matter, you know, I can just load them on you. You’ll have so much fun! You’ll have money! You’ll have time to do your own thing! It doesn’t cost you anything! Just do what you want to do! There’s no sacrifice involved here!”

But see, his small print is: “And, if you go this way, it is going to end up in disease, and destruction, and eventually death. But you’ll have fun getting there!”

Is that not the latest slogan from Nissan? “Enjoy the ride!” Well, the ride may be real fun, but it may end in a canyon somewhere with your nose down in the rocks as you go careening over the side of the cliff.

Paul puts it another way in Romans 6.

Romans 6:17-19 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.

You know, God has a hard sell here, because what He says to do, is, give up our easy slavery of working for ourselves and our flesh and our human nature, and go into a very hard slavery to God.

Righteousness is not easy. Disciplining the body is not easy. Those are hard things.

God, though, wants you to choose what is best, not what feels good right now, but what is best. He is not looking at it from our perspective, where we look at things through the eyes of flesh, where we have the option of pain and suffering on the one hand, or a cure on the other hand. And we choose the cure, which is quick, and will relieve us of the pain and the suffering. But God says, maybe it is better that you go through the pain and suffering, because I am going to heal you at the end of it. And then you will be healed.

There is not just some cure that maybe will extend your life a few years, but God says My way is better because at the end of those few years you are going to die anyway, and what will you have accomplished? You may have lived a little bit longer, but you may have lost your reward. You understand God's perspective here.

Paul says that we go through these trials, and some of us may come through with flying colors and end up with a great reward. But others may lose all their reward, yet themselves be saved. You see the difference here? God says you may go ahead and do these quick things, get these operations, or taking this drug, but you will pay the price. The price may be your reward.

Now that is not an easy thing to hear. But we are talking about trust in God here. He is looking at the long-term overall eternity. He is not looking at the next few weeks, or the next few months. He is looking at it for millions and billions of years into the future. And He says, “Okay, you may if you choose this other way, be cured. They may have a solution for you. But that is the end. You may be saved, but you did not trust in it. But if you do this thing in faith, and trust Me to heal you, you may suffer and die horribly, miserably.” Tradition is that Isaiah was sawn in two from his crotch upward inside a tree trunk. God sometimes allows His saints to go through very horrible things. But you know what Isaiah's reward is going to be? It is incredible what that man, when he is a God, will do, will have under him.

Just as a point in this, let us go back to Psalm 118. I think this is there for a reason. My mother told me just last week these are the exact two middle verses of the book—all 66 books.

Psalm 118:8-9 It is better to trust in the LORD than to put confidence in man. It is better to trust in the LORD than to put confidence in princes.

You get God's point? You have free moral agency. You can choose to do these other things. But He says, “It is better to trust Me.”

When we decide to do these things where we trust ourselves, or we trust in men, or we trust in all of mankind's knowledge, or whatever happens to be, have you noticed that He never comes down and says, “Stop! No further! Don’t do that!”

What does He do? He lets you do it, because you are a free moral agent. You have the right to choose. Supposedly, with the Holy Spirit, we now have the right to choose what is right. But He does not stop us if we choose what is wrong. Those are the things that go on our heads.

So He lets us do these things, and then we have to reap the consequences. Would it not be better to reap eternal life, and rulership in His Kingdom, than to have a fleeting remedy—a fleeting relief from our symptoms?

You remember in the sermon a couple of weeks ago, I talked at length about trusting in men, namely doctors, naturopaths, herbalists, acupuncturists, or whatever for healing.

Now, I have gotten quite a bit of criticism for talking about that. One person said, “Not all doctors are as bad as you said. There are some good doctors out there.” Another person said, “Would you have us never visit a doctor? What should I do? Just let myself die?” The reason why I am giving this sermonette is because those people did not get the point.

I never said that men do not have solutions. Doctors have cures for illnesses, disease, deformity, or whatever it is. They are very smart people. You remember God said nothing will be withheld from them that they set their hands to do. Men have a mind that is able to search those things out and come up with answers. We put a man on the moon. Andy told me just last week they have frozen a man and a woman. They had given their bodies to science, and they have cut 1-millimeter slices of these people and photographed them minutely and digitized them, so that now they can compare them to problems that may come up in whoever's lives and compare it with healthy tissue, and learn all kinds of stuff. They are able to reconstruct that whole person millimeter by millimeter on a computer screen.

But they are not God. That is what I was getting at in my sermon. They cannot heal. And splitting hairs here, they are very big hairs. They can cure, but they cannot heal. That is a big difference.

It is better to trust in God than to put your confidence in anything man can do. Remember, I said we are talking about eternity here. You would be much better served to trust in God for your healing. This physical life means nothing when compared with an eternity of Godhood that we can have and will have if we learn to trust in God.

Romans 8:18 and 23. This is what Paul said:

Romans 8:18 For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.

Romans 8:23 Not only that, but we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body.

Do we?

We are making a comparison here. At a very strict, very comprehensive, objective evaluation between two things—two ways of life—as to which is the better of the two. One may bring temporary relief. It may allow us to live a little longer. But in the final analysis, it is a negative. We lacked faith. We did not trust God. We failed a test. We may lose part, or all of our reward, though we ourselves may be saved (I Corinthians 3).

On the other hand, the other way is agonizingly difficult. It is uncertain even though we have faith in God. There is an uncertainty there, for even though we do it in faith, we do not know if God will heal us immediately.

We know that God will heal us. But we do not know when He will heal us. He may let us suffer for a while. He may even let us die before He heals us. He may decide that healing in the resurrection is the best thing. That is entirely up to Him. If we trust Him, we may suffer terribly. And not just the pains of our sickness, but from the slings and arrows of family, friends, doctors, and lawyers, and whoever else may be involved in the situation. It is no picnic to trust in God.

But in the end, when all is tallied by God, He will say (Matthew 25:21), “Well done, good and faithful servant. You were faithful over a few things.” He considers it a little thing. “I will make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your Lord.”

He has a whole different perspective on our lives than we do. And it is tough. I know it is tough. But, if we look at these things from an eternal viewpoint, which is better? That is the question, “Which is better?”

Now do not get me wrong, I am not minimizing the difficulty of doing this, not in the least. I can even empathize with these life-threatening situations.

Just two years ago this Thanksgiving, I had quinsy. Quinsy is a severe swelling of the area right around the tonsils. If you get it on both sides, it can actually close your throat, and you cannot eat.

I could not swallow. I had this sickness that imposed a weeklong fast on me, because I could not get anything down. I could barely get liquids down. And I thought I might die. I did not know. I have never felt that bad.

I have had kidney stones and whooping cough when I was a kid. Both of them could have killed me if they had become more severe. Thankfully they did not. I was 26 when I got chickenpox. That can be fatal to an adult. I did not have that severe case. But I could have. So, I am not a foreigner to these situations.

I think the most cutting criticism I received of my sermon was when someone said, “Well, that’s the kind of sermon that a young minister gives. If he were 70, he wouldn’t have given it that way.” But whoever said that got it totally backwards.

It was because I understood the difficulty of all these things—of having faith and trust in God, all the uncertainty, pain, and the suffering. That is why I gave it, because I know how hard it is. I know it is the better way. The Bible not only tells me so, I have lived it. And I want you to be able to see from my perspective, and from God's perspective, that it is the better way to go.

Let us end here in I Corinthians 12. I just want to pick up just the principle here.

Yes, doctors have solutions. They have cures. They have answers. They may be able to help in one way or another. Men naturally want to help. They want to find cures. They love to solve puzzles. They love challenges. They want to cure cancer, heart disease, AIDS, you name it. There is a society out there of doctors and lay people who want to cure these diseases. They have raised millions and billions of dollars to do this. There is a soft spot in men's hearts that wants to help people.

But I Corinthians 12:31, the last sentence in that verse, “And yet I show you a more excellent way.”