Come to think of it No.3 Getting on with yourself

That is my mother tongue, I greet you in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour. Our reading is taken from the epistle of Saint Paul to the Romans, chapter 7, beginning from verse 14 through to chapter 8, verse 2. We shall read another portion in the epistle of Saint John, 1 John, chapter 3, verses 1 to 3. The epistle of Paul to the Romans is chapter 7, beginning from verse 14. We know that the law is spiritual, but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin.

I do not understand what I do, for what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me.

I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out, for what I do is not the good I want to do. No, the evil I do not want to do, this I keep on doing.

Now, if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. So I fight this law at work. When I want to do good, evil is right there with me, for in my inner being I delight in God's law, but I see another law at work in the members of my body.

Waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am, who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then, I myself, in my mind, am a slave to God's law, but in the sinful nature, a slave to the law of sin.

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus, the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. The piece of Saint John, chapter 3, and verse 1. How great is the love of the Father has lavished on us that we should be called children of God, and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.

Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known, but we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure. That is the word of the Lord.

May God bless the reading of his word. Amen. We want to sing you a small chorus in Hindi, and this is very popular among OM teams.

It's an evangelistic song. It speaks about the love of Christ. Actually, it's the whole gospel message in this Hindi song.

It's sung by men's truck teams. I've done it hundreds of times. We park the truck on a crowded market, open the truck, we jump out, and someone plays guitar, and we begin to sing this song, attract the crowd, and preach the gospel.

If you're good learners, you may pick it up. Just want to take one minute and give you a just a little bit of report on what happened in Bihar when Brother Tony came and worked with us during this intensive outreach in the state of Bihar. I'm sure he has given you reports, but maybe there are a few things that I have not been able to even communicate to him through correspondence.

I just want to share with you as an encouragement and seeking continuous prayer. Brother Tony came, and he first spoke for five days in Ranchi to a group of young people. It was a youth meeting, and there were many non-Christians in this crowd, and there several were touched by the message, but one young man has stood out, and he came to know the Lord during those meetings, and through him, we were able to start student ministry in the student center, and now he's a leader after three years now of this students group, and they are going out on evangelism, so something has definitely happened as a result of that.

Also, we spoke at, well, we were on a team together, Brother Tony and myself and one Brother Kumar and a few others, and spoke in several villages over the nights, and the churches. We get some reports back now. They're still really thinking about it, and even some mentioned that they would like to have you back in Bihar, but we had a wonderful time together.

One thing I want to apologize, and I guarantee again that if you do send Brother Tony again, we would really like him to come back. We'll make sure that we'll put you in a two-star accommodation this time, because mosquitoes was a tremendous problem. I remember Brother Tony and myself, we slept out in the veranda for two nights, and somehow it was so hot, so we didn't use mosquito nets, and we probably just stayed up half night and just talked, and talked because we could not sleep.

There's the problems with mosquitoes, but we would really appreciate your prayers, and thank you very much for getting involved in the ministry with us there in India, and not just Brother Tony, but if any of you, Lord, leads you to come, please write to us, and we'll be very happy to have you there and minister with us in India. Thank you. If you were listening carefully to that Bible reading brought by our brother from East Africa, you could not have helped realizing that there is a contrast between what the Apostle Paul is saying in Romans and chapter 7, and what the Apostle John is saying in 1 John and chapter 3. Paul, for example, says, O wretched man that I am, and the Apostle John, he says, brothers, now are we the children of God, and it does not yet appear what we shall be, but when he shall appear, we shall be like him, and we will know him as he is.

The contrast between what Paul refers to in terms of the wretchedness of his situation, and that of John who looks with ecstasy at all that's happening in the present and will happen in the future. Well, I want to take those two texts as a back class to what I want to share with you on this subject of self-acceptance and how to achieve it. Someone has said that when a child comes into this world, he appears as a human question mark.

When a child comes into the world, he or she appears as a human question mark, and the first thing that is asked is this, who am I? Who am I? And later on, I reckon, coupled to that question will be another, why am I? And then perhaps at some stage, where am I? Who am I? Why am I? Where am I? You ever asked yourself those questions? You see, it's basic to this whole issue of self-acceptance, unless you can get answers there, then you'll never understand what it is to accept yourself. You'll never appreciate the purpose behind life. Now there are those, and let me deal with this problem just at the outset, there are those who will say that this type of subject and this preaching matter is not a fit topic for a Sunday evening purported to be a gospel service.

It smacks of psychology, self-acceptance. Some Bible-believing people will say that it smacks of the spirit of the age, man in the centre of a circle, and it looks as though Sargent's gone over to the modern trends of trying to be with it by putting up subjects outside the tab, inducing folk to come along, because, well, it tickles the palate of the modern taste. I don't think that you could be more wrong than that.

I believe that the gospel of Christ not only addresses that triplet of questions which I have just put, I believe that it gives the answer. I could hardly start to tell you tonight the caseload that has been mine during the many years I've been here and prior to being here, the few years that I was in London, that just hovered around this whole business of people being utterly unable to accept themselves, who can never answer the question, who am I, why am I, where am I? I think now, and hardly dare touch the subject lest my emotions break in on me, of a fine young lass who used to come to the Bible class I went to in London. A West London church, started as a nurse, and within about 18 months drowned herself in her parents' bathroom, and she was a Christian lass if ever there was one.

Couldn't come to terms with herself or with the outside world in nursing, in terms of the pain and the problems that confront some of our medics. I think of a fellow in full-time service who wrote me not many years ago to say that when he comes to church he can't declare to other people who he really is lest if they discovered what he was like they wouldn't want him, and we are all that he has got. Terrible problem of self-acceptance.

I remember someone, and I deliberately cloak this story in anonymity, coming along to have conversation with me, most definitely a born-again Christian, but certain things in life that hadn't been completely attended to for a couple of years all went well, and then suddenly a death wish broke in upon this individual. Two or three times I had this person rushed into Worthing Hospital, once having discovered her beneath or behind some bushes on the seafront. Further inquiry into her case, or into the case of this particular individual indicated that there had been terrible abuse in the early years of her life, nothing to do with the individual, and not in terms of responsibility, but nonetheless this person had grown up to consider themself as being utterly worthless, just a plaything, something that had been a cast-off for adults in years gone by.

I recall on one occasion following someone out of my vestry who'd rushed into Chapel Road, wanting the first bus that passed to run over them. Don't tell me, some of you mature Bible-believing Christians, that self-acceptance is a subject that smacks too much of psychology to be raised on a Sunday evening here at the Tab. I tell you, it's fundamental as a problem for many, many people, and possibly some here.

You see, there are a lot of folks who, it seems to me, in their self-evaluation, move from one of hatred to toleration. They don't like what they see when they look in a mirror, sometimes literally so. It sounds funny, but it's not funny if you're the individual.

I know of people who will turn a mirror the other way when they go into the room because they don't want to see the reflection of themselves, such is their self-devaluation. Of people who are small who want to be tall, of people who are tall who want to be small, of those with full-blown faces who want to have sharpened features, of those who are old who can't cope with old age, of those who are widowed who are always going back to the days when their partner was a light and life was tolerable, who cannot now, in later years, accept themselves. You see, it hits you when you're young, it hits you when you're middle-aged, it hits you when you're old, this whole business of who am I, why am I, where am I? And I believe, in the name of Jesus, that He has the answers to these questions, and it is within the prerogative of the preacher to address himself to such a subject as this.

I remember once talking to a general practitioner here in Worthing, a local doctor. His criticisms were kindly, but they were felt as I heard him engage me in discussion. It was this whole business of guilt, this whole business of not being able to accept oneself that was at the forefront of our conversation, and he went so far as to say that it was people like me that were creating the difficulties.

And in one sense, I fully understood what he was saying, though I think his conclusions erred because he was making an overstatement from limited evidence. You see, this was his idea. The gospel, as it is preached from evangelical pulpits, directs itself to those who are sinners.

You know, you can't be saved until you recognize that Jesus died on the cross of Calvary to eliminate, to eradicate the sins that you have committed, and therefore you must recognize your sinfulness. And many other texts of Scripture that he had heard, and that I could have added to, that just emphasize this particular point. Isaiah chapter 1, for instance, it refers to the sinful man as being full of putrefying sauce, spiritually speaking.

Now that sort of language is not exactly designed to make one love oneself, is it? And then when God speaks to Jacob in the Old Testament, he says, Thou worm Jacob. Once again, it's not exactly terminology that's going to make Jacob feel six foot tall. And when you move on into the New Testament, here's the Apostle Paul, and he is calling himself a wretch.

So said my doctor friend. The problem is basically this. You see, you evangelicals, when you're preaching, you make people feel guilty.

If you didn't make them feel so guilty, there wouldn't be the problems of self-acceptance. Now, I don't believe that the medical profession are without being contradicted, so I contradicted the man. You see, my answer is this.

Doctor, someone comes to you, can you help them until they come to you? No. Can they benefit from your prescription until they've cashed it in at the chemist and swallowed the tablets or rubbed on the ointment or whatever it is? No. Can you say that you have got a cure until you have gone through a diagnosis and made such a prescription? The answer is no.

And so I said, that's exactly the case with the preacher. That's exactly the case with the gospel. You see, the gospel of Jesus Christ is God's antidote to the sins that men and women like you and me have committed.

When you turn to the antidote, when the remedy is applied, then there are tremendous benefits that are of knock-on value to those who confess their need of Jesus Christ. But, and this is where I concede to the doctor's point, you see, there is the possibility that from a bible-based pulpit as this one is, that one may just sometimes on the negatives, the sinfulness of man. Man is a very sinful creature.

Of that there is no doubt. Scripture makes this plain almost on every page. But it's not just the sinfulness of man that scripture has to deal with, it is the potentiality that is in man once he, she has responded to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

This is why Paul, when he refers to being a wretched man and doesn't know which way to turn, he eventually, as you move into the eighth chapter, says, thank God there's no condemnation in him. In other words, in him I can get a new start. The apostle John can say, what I used to be I am now no longer, and at this moment I am a son of God.

And the future, well it's just out of this world, literally, as to what is going to happen to me. You see, there are enormous benefits when one applies the gospel of the Lord Jesus to the individual that enables that person to recognize who they are, why they are, where they are, and ultimately, where they will finish up. So I want this evening for you just to think through this with me.

Consider for a moment, will you, El, who you really are. You see, I believe that the Christian presentation of the answer to that question is so wonderful that outside of the gospel of Christ and his death on the cross, it's the most marvelous piece of information that is available for you and for me. You say, what do you mean? All right, some of you go to school, some of you once did, all of you once did.

And the popular idea of man is that, well, you know, we are the product of some evolutionary fruit, fluke. Billions of years ago, we're very generous with the amount of time, some primitive cells got it together, and as a result, you, me, there was no plan behind it. It was just a chance thing.

And so you and I find ourselves with the gift of life, not because there was some deliberate plan, not because there's some purpose in front of us, not because there's some ethical code by which we are to live our lives, but just as a fluke. Now, if you carry that one through to its logical conclusion, then you and I add up to very little. In fact, the philosophers would say that it produces, and they're right, a code of teaching known as nihilism, which if you wanted expressed bluntly and colloquially means I couldn't care a damn about anything or anyone at all.

I'm here by fluke. There's no one to judge me. There's nothing to live for apart from self aggrandizement, apart from satisfying my desires, and the best thing is to get the most I can out of life, and when I have got to that point where life is no longer attractive, get out of life completely.

That's nihilism. There is no meaning, no purpose at all. Now, the Bible doesn't teach that.

The Bible teaches that in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and in one series of creative acts, one day following another, God made things, and each period, each epoch of creation came under His inspection, and He said it was excellent, and the sixth occasion that God is engaged in creating, it's man who is the subject matter, and at the end of creating man, the Bible says God said it was good. He'd had a good week. It had been good right through from Sunday to Friday, and on the seventh day, He rested.

He made man in His own image. This is what I am, my brother, my sister, whatever others may tell you in the name of God, on the authority of God's Word, listen to me, you were born in the image of God. There is something about you that is unique.

You can take all the other species that there are on the earth, and there's nothing like man. You can compare man with the wonder of a sunset, with the glory of the Himalayan ranges as it catches the sun, as they catch the sun at night. You can put together all the marvels of creation.

You can go into the universe and investigate it all if it was possible. You could penetrate the celestial realm and bring the seraphim and the angels all to bear and compare them with man, and you will discover that they are inferior to man because man has a potential that is utterly God-like. He comes as close to being God as it is possible to be, but of course there is a distance between Him and the infinite.

Man can think, man can feel, man can reason, man can compose a symphony, man can do a thousand and one things that the animal world cannot do. We are born, the Bible tells us, in the image of God, and if you were to check the genealogy of Adam in Luke's Gospel and chapter three, you will discover that at the end of that list, that long list of names, as you come to the name Adam, he is described as the Son of God. You were created in God's image, and therefore you have great value.

But you see, things went wrong, didn't they? Terribly wrong for man. This individual who has the mark of God upon him threw away what God had given and broke the laws of God. So what did God do? Well, He shows the value of ordinary men and women by engaging in an act of rescue that the universe has not known, apart from on planet earth.

John 3.16, For God so loved the world, He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. God stepped into time and space to rejuvenate, to remake the man that He had originally constructed in His own image. He did this by the death of Jesus on the cross and the release of recreative energy, so that when a Christian person looks at the cross and at what Jesus has done, he doesn't think in terms of the millions that have been saved, but rather he takes upon his lips the personal acceptance of the Apostle Paul as he says of Jesus, He loved me and He gave Himself for me.

That's the value that you have in the sight of God. He loved you and He gave Himself for you. Consider, if what I have said is correct and I think I have scripture on my side, consider further.

What you're told to do is a consequence of this. If you've followed through my argument thus far, it's quite easy. Man was made in the image of God.

He's not the product of fluke forces. Man receives the love of God displayed in the Lord Jesus on the cross of Calvary, which is directed towards Him so that his sins might be forgiven. Now my question is this, or my challenge is this, consider what we're told to do as a consequence of this.

And it's most remarkable, the answer, and if you don't listen clearly, you'll misunderstand me. Man is told as a consequence of this to love himself. Did you hear that? Man is told as a consequence of this to love himself.

Seven times in the Bible, beginning at Leviticus, going through Matthew, Mark and Luke, to Romans, to Galatians, to James, the command comes through again and again, love your neighbour as you love yourself. But we live in an evangelical world which seems to suggest that self-love is sinful. I am saying that self-love is biblical.

Many Christians, says Selwyn Hughes, many Christians have developed the attitude that it is right and proper to put themselves down, to debase themselves. We must see ourselves as sinners, incapable of bringing about our own salvation. We are nevertheless, argues Hughes, beings created in the image of God.

No one should downgrade what God has marked up. We're told to love ourselves. Now, why should I love myself? And what does it mean to love myself? I should respect myself as a Christian because I have been dignified by God.

I have been dignified by God. I have been restored positionally back to that time when God created man in His own image in the first place and God, you remember, said it was good, He'd had a good week. And for the Christian to devalue himself, to devalue herself, to look in the mirror and find that they are repelled by what confronts them, it dishonours God who sent His Son to recreate them.

You love yourself because God has dignified you. Now look, a word to my older friends. You might have found it easier to love yourself when you were 17 than when you were 70, but the Bible indicates that the love, the respect that you have for yourself is as important in your older age as in your younger age.

You are to acknowledge what God has done for you in your life, to love yourself, not to despise the old age, the wrinkling of the brow, the problems of a body that doesn't function as well as it used to function, the beauty that the Bible refers to as being the most valuable commodity is not the external beauty of physique, it is the internal beauty of a heart and a personality that has responded to the love, the corrective love of God in such a way that it can be said of that individual that Christ lives within them. Look at yourself in the mirror and tell yourself that God has dignified you and love what God has done as a result. Self-love, my friend, is not selfishness.

There are some people who think that way, you see. It's a wrong use of the English language. To love yourself is to be selfish.

No. The selfish man is a man who lives entirely to himself. He runs a limited company and it is so microscopic in its dimensions.

Self-love is not self-obsession. You know, there's a Greek by the name of Narcissus and indeed his name gave us a verb. He fell in love with himself.

He's wandering by a pool, it sounds ridiculous, it probably is. He's wandering by a pool and he saw a reflection of himself in the pool and he thought, my, what a lovely person. And he had a sort of fixation upon himself, absolutely obsessed with the self.

We're not talking about that. That's self-obsession. That's a further permutation of selfishness.

What we're talking about in terms of self-acceptance is loving what God has done in my life. David was loved by Jonathan. You remember Jonathan said he loved him as though he was his own self.

Jonathan knew what it was to love the self. Let's go to the marriage stakes for a moment, shall we? Here's the apostle Paul teaching, no man was less a feminist than Paul. He didn't engage in sentimental language, but when he spells out what it means to be married, he says for a man, take your wife and love her as your own body.

Love her as you love yourself. It is possible, you see, in a biblical sense, in a mature sense, to love ourselves. Here's the prodigal, let me illustrate it.

The point that I'm trying to make, this just flashed in my mind, I trust from the Lord, an hour or so ago I was trying to find something that would pin it in the minds of young people as I teach in this area, so they don't misunderstand what I'm trying to say and all the friends too, so they can appreciate that what I'm teaching is biblical this evening. Here's the prodigal, he goes back to the father's house. Now the prodigal, when he first embraced the father, he stank of pigs, right? He'd been looking after the swine.

He'd been living at that level. Now when he got back to the father's house, when he'd received the love of the father, the clothes of the father, the ring of the father, the affection of the father, the status of the father's house, would it honor the father for him to continue to hate himself as the man who was the swineherd, as a man who mixed amongst pigs, as the man who couldn't accept the forgiveness that the father had granted to him? Father, further from being an example in humility, it would almost be a libel on the nature of the father. And you know, my good friends, I've known young folk and older folk who have libeled the father god because they have refused to accept the forgiveness that God has granted, and they are still confessing and repenting sins that God has completely erased from his memory.

And this inability to feel forgiven is one of the factors that mitigates against self-acceptance. Do you understand that? You see, what I'm trying to teach is of great practical value for many, many people here, I'm sure. May God give me words to make what I'm trying to say plain.

Consider what you're told to do. You're told to love yourself, for the consequence of what Jesus has demonstrated, God loves you so much, He's dignified you in sending His Son to die for you. Now what God counts precious, you, it is not right for you to call valueless, worthless, once you might have been like that.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me, that's what I was like, says Newton. But I'm no longer like that. Why not? Well, because of the amazing grace of God, He has made me, I quote the apostle John once more, He has made me to become a son of God, not in the future, but now, now are we the sons of God? You know, some of you don't like some of the songs that have come from more charismatic elements, and in degree, I've got caution on some of them, but a lot of them are first-rate, because they have allowed the Christian church, once again, to rediscover, listen, what they were singing in the 17th century, that the love of God, the personal love of God, has graced the Christian, and lifted him up, so he can refer to God as Father, and sing of the affections of one who loves Him with an everlasting love.

That's what Father has done for you and for me. He loves us, and we can sing of that love in a way that honors the Father. Now, I want to try and bring things together in my last five minutes.

I want you to consider the goal that is yours as a Christian over against that of a non-Christian. Consider the goal that's yours. You say, what do you mean, over against that of a non-Christian? Well, you see, my argument with secular humanism, that means to say, every teaching that is not religiously grounded, and is therefore antagonistic to Christianity, my argument with secular humanism is this, it is secular humanism that destroys the acceptance of man.

You say, I don't understand. All right, you will. The day is coming when I shall carve Dallas up from this pulpit in terms of its philosophy, but let me just whet your appetite.

What do the self-offerers do? Now, come on, what do they do? They present you with a picture of the perfect woman in terms of physique, the perfect man. They give you masculinity. No wonder there are people who, after they've seen rubbish like that, when they move into their dressing rooms and they look at themselves, they see all their deformities, all the way in which they're not like they have been, the perfect people have been screened physically to be on the television.

Don't you see there is something there that wars against the very ethic of Christianity? It says that man's goal, man to be accepted, must be like this. You take the realm, the whole realm of advertising, a lot of it is degraded. How do I become masculine? Well, I smoke the right cigarette, I drive the fastest car, I wear the special talcum powder which will cause the girls to turn their heads as I walk around, I must be masculine, I must be well-developed, and so on and so forth.

This is placarded in front of the people. If you want to be with it, you need this commodity. You live like this.

This is the place where people are destroyed in terms of their self-acceptance. I argue against much of the philosophy behind modern advertising as being inferior to the morality of Christianity. I argue against most, not all, of the stuff that comes across our televisions as being inferior to the biblical ethic and one of the causes of people today failing to get on with themselves.

It gives us goals which are unobtainable and even if they were obtainable, they are palpably false. What is my goal as a Christian? To be like Jesus, to be like Jesus, all through life's journey from earth to glory, to be like Him. Now, I'm speaking strongly, but I feel it.

You see, the man who was highest in the realm of self-acceptance was Jesus, right? You never find Jesus losing his identity or seeking his identity. The questions, who am I, why am I, where am I, are questions that Jesus is always informed as to what the answers are. Even as a 12-year-old lad, he's able to say, don't you know I should be about my father's business.

Now, the nature of the acceptance of Jesus, which is so wonderful, is this, that he's never disturbed by internal events. You say, what do you mean? Well, he doesn't lose peace of mind. I'll put it colloquially, he doesn't lose his cool, does he? He's incredibly controlled.

He's not frustrated. He's not always striving after a materialistic goal that he can't get, or development in certain areas of sexuality, and so on and so forth. This doesn't even seem to enter his mind.

He's perfectly composed. He's perfectly controlled. He accepts himself.

Who am I? I am the Son of God. Why am I? I am in the world to do the will of the Father. Where am I? At this particular point, I'm at the right place in his will.

Now, Jesus has come to reproduce himself amongst us. C.S. Lewis was never more right when he said that it was Jesus's will to produce little Christs. So, you see, for you to be accepted by yourself, you need to recognize the claims that Jesus had upon your life, because he is the perfect example.

Don't you see? He's a perfect example of what you want to be. All that you've wanted to achieve in terms of self-acceptance, he has achieved it. And the goal of being like Jesus is a realizable goal, with knock-on benefits that will take you from time and into eternity.

The other goals that I've highlighted, they're false goals. Even if you could get there, when you'd arrive, you'd still want to go further on, and you'd discover that however much you attained in terms of those goals, they would always leave you grasping and gasping for more. But not Jesus.

And he takes you as you are. You don't have to do a crash course in becoming a monk or a nun. You don't have to get behind the cloistered walls, because Jesus wants people out of salt in this world as light, to give illumination.

And so he says, come, come unto me. Come with your habits that are a problem to you. Come with minds that you find difficult to discipline.

Come with all your hang-ups. Come with all your inadequacies. Come, come to me, and let's talk them through.

And surrender yourself to my work at the cross and its benefits, and know the filling, the infilling of my Spirit in your life, and you'll discover that the point of getting to know me, you get to know yourself. And as I dignify you, so you can accept yourself and live your life as a praise to my eternal glory. Jesus describes the church as those who are accepted in the beloved.

Now, if you're in that category, glory in it. Glory in it. If you're not in that category, by God's grace, get into it.

And once you've known the blessings, face yourself in the mirror and tell yourself every day, I am someone for whom Christ died. He has given me a gift. I will use that gift to the best of my ability.

I don't want to be what somebody else is. I want to be what God has made me, because he accepts me, and that is enough. And therefore, I will live on that basis for his honor and for his glory.

The beginning of self-acceptance is to come to the feet of Jesus and to know his life permeating your life. you