 GCO Mission and Goals | GCO Ministry Testimonials | Projects | Resources/Donations/Contact | SEARCH | |
Jesus or 1,300 Rats
Presenter: Larry Kirkpatrick
Location: Mentone Seventh-day Adventist Church, California, USA
Delivery: 2006-07-01
Publication: GreatControversy.org 2006-07-01 22:13Z
Type: Sermon
URL: http://www.greatcontroversy.org/gco/ser/kir-jesusor1300rats.php
A few days ago, a man in Petaluma called the police to report a foul smell emanating from his neighbor’s residence. Animal control officers came, entered the home, and found rats in cages, some stacked six deep and missing eyes and limbs.
How did it begin? The neighbor who owned the 1,300 rats says that it all began with an Indian python. Pythons must be fed, so he bought a rat at the pet store to feed the python. But when he attempted to feed the rat to the python, it let out a fearful squeaking and he decided not to do it. In fact, he began to play with the rat. He decided that rats would make interesting pets too, so he went down to the pet store and bought four more.
He thought he could control them. “I did not set out to do this,” he told the newspaper. “I do acknowledge irresponsibility and there’s a case for laziness, denial, incompetence and just plain foolishness.” Today his home reeks of urine, the floor is covered by rodent feed mixed with rat droppings, and the walls of the house are gnawed. It may finally have to be torn down.
The story provides an illustration of the fallen human nature at work. The man had a snake in his house and that led to a rat in his house. But he couldn’t bear to give up the one rat. Next there were five. By the time animal control came four years later, 1,300 and a ruined house. (See 1,300 Rats Overwhelm Man’s Home, accessed 2006-06-30 20:05Z.)
Born Bent
When we are born, we are already defective; courtesy of Adam, we already have a humanity that is bent in the wrong direction, inclined to the illegitimate indulgence of self. Every man since the Fall is so born (Ecclesiastes 7:29; 9:3; Isaiah 53:6). But no man has to join himself to that nature. Still, all who have come to moral accountability—except Christ—have. Therefore, all need a Savior because they have chosen to join Satan in rebellion.
Let’s expand on this. Do we need a Savior from a legal penalty for offending God who is stronger than us? Do we worship Him because He is big and we are small? Because He has more power than we have? Remember, Satan has more power than we have; does he then deserve our worship?
Salvation is more about restoration than legal penalty. Yes, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:11). Yes, all have violated the law of God and are therefore deserving of its penalty: death (Romans 6:23). But there is something more in this picture.
Consider the 1,300 rats again. Remember, the man started with one rat. Then he bought four more. After just a few years, he had 1300. Sin is the same way. You start with one. At some point, having become morally responsible, you choose rebellion; you choose illegitimate self-indulgence; you choose—there is no denying it—sin. Once you’ve made that choice, you have further damaged yourself. To the bent nature you are born with, you have added. You have plowed a furrow. You have marked out a bio-chemical, neurological pathway in your brain. You have made steps to follow. Next time, you will be much less resistant toward making the same choice because you have cultivated that sin.
How many of us have in a trip to the mountains perhaps, walked in the snow? If the snow is deep, you go out of your way to follow tracks already made, because that is the easiest pathway forward. That is the way it is with cultivated sin too. And we are such creatures of habit. How many of us here today sat in the very same pew last week?
Sin damages us, changes us, hardens. It educates us more deeply with its every incursion to selfishness. Each sin makes us less like Jesus and more like Satan.
Sin unfits us for fellowship with God and with our neighbors. Like the man who finally couldn’t stand it any more and called the authorities about the foul odor from his neighbor’s rat-infested home.
Sin cannot be permitted to continue indefinitely. Ultimately, it would destroy its practitioners. Left unchecked, it would produce a crop of people so self-indulgent that there could be no co-existence with them. There would be unnecessary suffering and they would finally depopulate themselves along with the rest of us. So God intervenes; He does not do so arbitrarily. He waits, what seems to us unnecessarily long, before He acts.
Time will tell its story. The universe waits as we tick down to the place where the tale will have been told. Then God will end sin once and for all and it will never rise up again. We are at that verge. But how did we get there?
The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan
Zoom out now and consider these matters from a larger perspective. Things boil down like this:
Man was made for greatness and more, for morality (Genesis 1:26, 27; 31; Colossians 1:16; Revelation 4:11). But another, the highest among the created beings, Lucifer, chose to rebel against the idea of unselfishness upon which God had based His kingdom. He successfully deceived Adam and Eve, and when they chose to disobey God, the “very good” humanity He had given them was bent (Genesis 1:31). They would be able to pass on to their posterity only the same kind of disordered humanity they now possessed (Genesis 5:3). But God was ready in case they would bend themselves. He Himself would intervene and launch a rescue operation (Revelation 13:8).
The rescue operation would have several stages. First, the introduction of prophets and prophecy; God wanted to communicate with man, to tell him what he couldn’t learn from the world around him in its satanically-graffitied state. Also, to offer them insight into the damaged nature of our after-the-fall humanity and how it could be restored. Then, the promise of a Restorer and His intervention. All this, and still the preservation of human free choice for eternity.
The Bible tells of the sacrifice of the Restorer, Jesus. It tells how we love Him because He first loved us (1 John 4:19). That, while we were still without strength (Romans 5:6), even enemies of heaven, He walked step by torturous step to the cross, and lay still while the hammer fell. For me He was nailed to the tree. It tells how His Father accepted this sacrifice for us and how He went to heaven, and how since 1844 in the presence of God He has served as our great High Priest, our Mediator, our Intercessor, our Physician on high. In answer to our prayers He sends grace to help in time of need (Hebrews 4:16).
Yet there is more. There was a sacrifice for Jesus but there is also a sacrifice for us (Psalm 51:17; Romans 12:1, 2). Jesus gave life that we might have life, but we give up death. We sacrifice unhealthy preferences, give up sinful dainties of death for the righteousness of the righteous God and for the life that comes through Him only. Yes, we make our lives a living sacrifice, which is our reasonable service. Our disordered humanity is inclined to evil, but we endure those clamors, we deny self-destructive self, we endure for He who endured the cross. We take up our cross daily (Luke 9:23; 1 Corinthians 15:51), although—so unlike His—our cross has no saving merit in it (John 10:7-11; Acts 4:12). Not any. I have never endured what Jesus endured. His cross looms large. Mine? Let me find a microscope.
His cross saves me. Halleluja! But strangely, by His choice, my cross—my little tiny cross has a part in vindicating Him. How can this be?
You see, God demonstrates His goodness through His people at the climax of the conflict. The final restoration is the realization of the divine ideal. Man, made in God’s image, is remade in that image. Big plans; that is what He has for us. Not that we asked.
And what will it mean to live out those plans? Is it hard? Complicated? Obscure? Not at all. The steps are basic and clear.
First, we must recognize the divine intention in our creation. God wants us to be holy, healthy, and happy for eternity and He has never given up that ideal. His plans loom as large and beautiful for us today as ever they did.
We must also recognize the fact of the Fall and where it leaves us, born with a disordered, bent humanity. For 6,000 years the torrents of human rebellion have beaten and beaten at the image of God. In tiny increments the clarity of that image slowly dims as our race degenerates. Then we cut away another whole layer of God’s image by cultivating sin, rebellion, and selfishness on our own.
But then comes Jesus, and we need to accept the Restorer and His plan of restoration. Will we trust in Him? Will we be serious about giving up that which He loathes?
The answer will be born out as we daily participate in the divine life He offers, interacting with God, representing Him, introducing others to Him, and best of all, growing more like Him. More like Jesus! This is what it means to be a Christian. Having my sins forgiven, yes. Being empowered to live without sinning, yes. Being readied to pass through a time of trouble such as never has been or ever will be again, yes. But more than this: knowing Jesus as my Elder Brother and Friend.
There is nothing else—even remotely—like it.
Jesus or 1,300 Rats
Will you put your sins away? Or will you play with them? Will you choose Jesus or will you let them multiply. And multiply. And multiply? Getting rid of one rat, or four, or five, that could be difficult. But God’s power is sufficient. And it will still be sufficient if you come to the place where you have 1,300 rats. But we must beware. When does one become fully joined to his idols? (Psalms 115:4-8; Hosea 4:17).
We have all sinned, and we can’t count how many times. There are many zeros in the number. We have by choice fed our disposition to rebellion. But His Father is drawing us (John 6:44). Jesus is drawing us (John 12:32). His Spirit is drawing us (Revelation 22:17). God’s very goodness is drawing us (Romans 2:4). Because of divine intervention we can respond. Because Jesus became one of us fully identifying Himself with us, died for us, and intercedes for us, we can come to Him. We are not trapped, able only to desire righteousness but not to choose it. Our God has paid to redeem and He intervenes to give to man freedom to choose. All this even is indissolubly linked to the cross.
Our character can be changed so that we come to a place of complete character alienation from Satan, or we can build our friendship with him until we are confirmed rebels with no desire to do anything but evil. We can choose Jesus or 1300 rats. The aroma of our character will either have the incense of Christ or the sulphur of Satan. Today we are each choosing, as we do every day. We are making a fresh commitment to A or a fresh commitment to B.
Dear Father in heaven, here we are, hearts and heads bowed before you. We are open books to you. Not one of us is straight. None of us is very much like Jesus. We’re more like tangled knots than straight lines. We want to serve You, but we are spiritually palsied and our goodness cannot recommend us. It is tainted. Our motives seem never quite as pure as we want them to be. It is true O Lord, that we can hardly expect to rightly read our own hearts (Jeremiah 17:9), but it also true “that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners” (1 Timothy 1:15). That is what we are. So Jesus came here to save us.
Please Father, accept Jesus’ sacrifice for us. Please, send Your Holy Spirit to do a deeper work in us. Transform us so that we can represent a character like Yours to others who need to experience how it is possible to live above our animal inclinations. No strange odor need emanate from us. Make us profitable for You for the ministry You have appointed to each one of us (2 Timothy 4:11; 2 Corinthians 5:18). In Jesus’ name, amen. GCO
© 2006 by GreatControversy.org. GCO grants permission to individuals, wholeheartedly encouraging them to copy and reproduce documents and files appearing on this site, in an unaltered state, and for non-commercial use, unless otherwise noted. All other rights reserved. Other groups or entities wishing to reproduce these materials are encouraged to contact us with reproduction requests.
