March 3, 2002

Self-Will

Luke 15:11-32

How many people in here today are old enough to remember who Frank Sinatra was? Is there anybody who doesn't know? I want to play you a little bit of the song that he is best remembered for.

(Play short clip from "My Way")

Last November, in the town of Manila in the Philippines, a man was killed and another man was wounded when a fight broke out in a karaoke bar because somebody was singing that song out of tune. And since then, Filipino karaoke parlors have been removing the song "My Way'' from play lists because fights frequently broke out whenever that song was sung. I'm not exactly sure what that little tidbit has to do with the sermon, but as long as I am mentioning "My Way," it is just too interesting to leave out...

Last week we spent some time in Luke 15, looking at a classic example of how Satan sells us a bill of goods, getting us to be dissatisfied with the things God gives us, getting us wanting something else, getting us to fall into sin. One of the things he uses to get us into trouble is our willingness to focus on our self, and disregard God, other people, or anything that doesn't suit us. I want us to spend some time today focusing on us doing things "My Way." Our self will, and some of the problems it can cause us.

If you have your Bibles with you today, and I hope you do, turn to Luke 15, verse 11. Same place we were at last week, same place we're gonna be next week. " And he said, A certain man had two sons:
:12 And the younger of them said to his father, Father, give me the portion of goods that falleth to me. And he divided unto them his living.
:13 And not many days after the younger son gathered all together, and took his journey into a far country, and there wasted his substance with riotous living.
:14 And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in that land; and he began to be in want."

There are five applications about self will that I want to make from these verses, and while they would certainly apply to non-believers, they also apply to us as Christians, and to our Christian walk.
1st: Self will struggles against authority, and it rejects authority.
2nd: Self will is not content to be under the God the Father's authority.
3rd: Self will tends to begin subtly and finish up openly.
4th: Self will always creates problems, and it frequently leads to sin.
And 5th: Self will is only resolved by our surrender to God.
All of us struggle in these 5 areas, look with me at each of them in turn:

1st: Self will rejects human authority, and it also rejects God's authority over us. Look at verse 12, "Father, give me what is mine." His inheritance was his, but it was under his father's control, and he didn't want that.

All of us in here have had jobs, been in the military, various things where we were under authority to someone else; did it ever aggravate you? Our fleshly human nature rebels at being under authority to another person, and it especially rebels at being under authority to God. There have been times, especially when I was a new Christian, when I had struggles with what God's Word instructed me to do. I didn't want to do that. I wanted to do what I wanted to do, and all of us are like that. Self will always struggles and resists the authority of God over us.

2nd: Self will is not content to stay in the Father's house. Verse 13; the young man wasn't content to stay home, he wanted to leave, to go somewhere far away from his fathers influence over him, to get out from under his authority. When you are full of self will, when you are full of yourself, you will be restless under the authority of God. After Adam and Eve sinned, God put them out of the Garden of Eden, but you know what? I bet that after a while, they would have left anyway; because their minds and attitudes had changed. I think that God would still have come to see them every day, but they probably wouldn't have been comfortable with that anymore. Even if God hadn't put them out, I think they eventually still would have left.

All of us as Christians are under authority, but when we are full of self will, we will always be restless under authority, and the more self willed we are, the more restless we will be.

When we hear of young people getting into trouble with society, with the law, how often does it happen that there is first a rebellious, self willed attitude? That has a lot to do with it, doesn't it?

Sometimes we have a situation where there is a problem with rebellion, and the person leaves mentally and emotionally, even when they don't leave physically. Perhaps some of you have been in situations where there was a teenager living at home, and they were having a problem with authority. Or maybe you were the teenager living at home, and your self will was causing you to butt heads with your folks. Did you ever notice how after a while, there is this distancing, a sort of disconnectedness, a detachment, that starts to show up? Even though nobody has moved out physically, moving out has already happened mentally and emotionally. The porch light's on, but nobody's home. They moved out.

And the same thing is true in the spiritual realm. When you are full of self will, you will not be happy to stay in your Father's house. Your self will wants you out from under your Heavenly Father's roof. Especially when sin is involved. When there is sin in your life, when your self will is running the show, you will want to be somewhere that you are not reminded of God's authority. It is hard to come to church when you and the Father are at odds.

3rd: self will always begins subtly and ends openly. When the young man moved out of his father's house, that wasn't sinful. It is OK for young people to move out, that's normal, it happens all the time. Asking his father to divide him his inheritance wasn't sinful either. It might have been inconvenient, or thoughtless, or an aggravation, we don't know the exact circumstances, but it wasn't necessarily a sin. Neither of these things were sins in themself, but because of the young man's self will, they set the stage for sin to take over. The self will in his life very soon manifested itself as sin.

He squandered all his inheritance on fast times and loose women. His sin was not obvious at the first, but it was real obvious at the last. This has some very important things to say to us as believers. If you have received Jesus Christ as your personal Savior, God has given you an incredibly rich inheritance. We read in 1st Peter that God has begotten us a second time into an inheritance that is incorruptible, and undefiled, that does not fade away, and that is reserved in heaven for us. You have an inheritance in Christ that you cannot mess up or lose.

Don't let that cause you to be careless. There is another aspect of your inheritance that you can mess up and lose, and that is the rewards that you win for Christ. Or fail to win. The rewards that you stand to win, or lose. Paul points out in 1st Corinthians 3, that if you spend your life trying to build things out of wood, hay, and stubble, none of it will survive the judgement seat of Christ. I realize that rewards at the judgement seat of Christ are not the same things as an inheritance, but for our purposes this morning, the application is the same. We have a wonderfully rich potential that we can fail to live up to. That we can fail to obtain. Just like the prodigal son's inheritance, it is ours to throw away. None of us wants to squander our inheritance of rewards foolishly. We have an incredible potential that God has given us, and it is ours to stupidly throw away, if we are self willed and foolish, and follow after sin.

When the prodigal son got away from his father, his inheritance was lost, and while later on his father happily took him back, we don't see that he ever got his inheritance restored to him. When our self will leads us away from God, there is an excellent chance that we will squander at least some portion of what God wanted us to have, and there is a good possibility that what is lost will not be regained.

For example: when I go and pick up a tool out of the toolbox to work on something, and that tool is filthy, greasy and nasty, I have to stop what I'm doing and clean up that tool, get it fit to use, before I can finish the job. When there is sin in your life because of your self will, God has got to clean you up before He can use you for the job He has in mind. And while He was cleaning you up, who knows what opportunities were missed?

4th: self will always creates problems, and leads to sin. Not only did the prodigal son fall into a terribly sinful lifestyle and lose all his inheritance, when he did come home, it looks to me like there were some issues between him and his older brother. Listen to what the older brother says to his father after the younger brother comes home, verse 29: "And he answering said to his father, Lo, these many years do I serve thee, neither transgressed I at any time thy commandment: and yet thou never gavest me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends:
:30 But as soon as this thy son was come, which hath devoured thy living with harlots, thou hast killed for him the fatted calf." Just the way he refers to him, do you get the idea that he has no use for his younger brother? And all we are seeing is just the small version, if were where we could see all the details, I bet we would see anger and resentment that goes real deep in this situation.

How about his father? Both in verse 24 and in verse 32, we see how his father felt about the whole thing: "...my son, ... was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found." That father was emotionally just like a parent whose child had died. His son to him was as good as dead. His father never expected to see him alive again.

I went to a funeral last Saturday, of an older couple whose son had died, and their grief was pitiful. That poor mother was devastated, and the father was just sort of hanging in there, probably for the sake of his wife, because I could tell how bad it had hit him. And that's the way this father that Jesus describes here was. That's what self will can do to a family.

Then there was the personal ruin that it caused this young man. It is wonderful that his father welcomed him back, it is wonderful to have a father like that, and that is what our heavenly Father is like, but look at how much has been lost. This guy was impoverished. Everything he had was gone. Now maybe he started over again, and went out and made something out of his life, maybe he ended up in a good way, with a good wife, and children, and a comfortable home. I hope he did. But even if he did, everything was still a lot harder than it might have been, because of all that had been lost.

Is there any solution for this problem of self will? Sin ruling our lives? Is there anything that we can do in our lives to keep us from falling into this same kind of situation?

Yes there is. Surrender your will to God. You can do it sooner, or you can do it later, the prodigal son chose later. But meanwhile, time is passing. Opportunities come and go. The longer you wait, the harder you make it on yourself. Because God will be not be satisfied with anything less than surrender, no matter how much it costs.

For example: look at how God brought this prodigal to that place of surrender: God let him get himself in a real bind. Parents: the day will come when your kids will get themselves in a real bind. Sometimes you need to bail them out, sometimes you need to leave them alone. If it was youthful immaturity and an honest mistake, let `em stew in it for long enough to learn something, and then help them out. But if it was self will and rebellion, why bail them out now? God wants them Christlike, and all you're doing is frustrating the process. If you bail them out of God's classroom, their next lesson might need to be a lot harder.

God let that young man go as far on his own way as he could go. He let him go down until the only way left was up. And when he finally did look up, it was his decision. God does not force His will upon us. God did not force him to yield. He could have continued in his self will and died in his stubbornness. And we can too.

Whether you are a believer this morning or an unbeliever. Whether you are a follower of Christ by the new birth, or if you have never personally received Jesus Christ as your Savior: If you are living in self will, going your own way without regard to God's will for your life, He will put problems, obstacles, wake up calls in your path, seeking to turn you back to Himself. But if you choose to ignore them, you bear all the responsibility for the consequences.

One final thought, and then we're done: throughout this passage it refers to the prodigal son as the younger son, and probably most of us think of him as someone in their late teens or early twenties. But that's not what it says. It simply says that he is younger than his brother. He could be 25, or 35, or 45, or 55. We don't know. Rebellion and self will is not just a teen age related problem. It would be great if it was, because then us old timers wouldn't have to worry about it, but we do.

What's scary is, I suspect that self will is harder for us older people to deal with than it is for some of our younger folks. We get more set in our ways. We are less receptive to advice or change, we think we have seen it all and we know it all.

So here is a self test for all of us to take: what is your response to the Word of God when it says something that doesn't suit you? When God's Word says something that doesn't line up with what you like, what you prefer, or the way you've always done things; how do you respond? Does it knock you back on your rear end, make your eyes get wide, and your mind is filled with the thought: "Woah! Lord, turn me around! I am NOT where I need to be!" Or do you rationalize? Start looking for some other Scripture verse that goes along with your way of thinking, that will get you off the hook? Or do you just bullfrog up and get huffy, and do the Scarlett O'Hara routine? "I'm not going to think about that today; I'll think about that tomorrow!"

Be careful. Whatever your attitude is toward God's Word whenever it pokes you, that is a good indicator of your personal level of self will. And a good indicator of your potential for falling into sin. Let's pray.