Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
We
always hear the names Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but most of us don’t actually
know the story.
Dr. Jekyll created Mr. Hyde. He thought that he would be happier if he could create an evil half of himself
who could do all the sin he desired without feeling any of the guilt that came along with that sin. In the end, it proved to not
be the case. The sin – the evil side - Mr. Hyde - when left unchecked, overtook
the good side.
Do
you flirt with evil? Do you desire to do evil and expect it to not damage you?
Do
we even recognize evil when we see it? Unfortunately, evil doesn't typically come looking
like Mr. Hyde. It looks like a small compromise. A little lie to get your way,
to win an argument, or to just cause others to think better about you. Some
gossip to make you feel better by tearing someone else down. It comes by
turning your head when you see suffering. Evil is anything in our life that
causes us to miss out on the life that God has intended for us.
It
would be convenient if evil came up to our house dressed in horns and a
pitchfork and like a little trick-or-treater when they ask “Trick or
treat?”, evil would ask, “Life or death?”
No one would choose the death that evil brings if phrased in such a
way. We would choose life. But evil comes in disguise.
Jesus taught:
Beware of false prophets, who come to
you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize
them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from
thistles? So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree
bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear
good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown
into the fire. Thus you will recognize them by their fruits. (Matthew 7:15-20 ESV).
Sinclair Lewis wrote, “When
fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the
cross" (From It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis). Leaders, even those
who are well-intentioned yet misguided, must wrap the oppressive policies in
the ideals of safety, patriotism, and spirituality if they want to slide them
by the American people.
Evil does likewise; it does not knock on the door of
our lives dressed in a pitch fork and horns. It comes to our door dressed as
convenience or pleasure. A quicker way to do something. Getting what we want –
just easier. Just one little step in the wrong direction. And then, after
taking little wrong step after little wrong step, one more in the wrong
direction followed by another, we find our lives way off course from where God
wanted them. Instead of being free from sin so that we can be a blessing, we
find ourselves enslaved to sin, living for ourselves, slowly destroying the
life intended for us to live.
Ron Philipose was at the doctor’s office with
his wife and three year old son, when he received a call from the police after
a neighbor had called in a disturbance due to repeated glass breaking in his
house. Upon his arrival at the scene, Ron and the police noticed blood on the
couch and wall. The cops asked Ron to step back for his safety as they went
further into the home to investigate. In the back room, they found the
intruder, a 300 pound deer, who had broke a window to gain entry
into the home, who couldn’t figure out a way to get out with his goods. (From Surprise intruder breaks into Philadelphia home: 300-pound deer).
Unfortunately, Satan doesn’t come into our life like a 300 pound deer. If he
did, unleashing that sort of massive destruction, we would stay away from him.
Nobody would be willing to live with a wild 300 pound deer in their house.
Unlike a wild 300 pound deer, Satan’s more
like a mouse.
I’m talking about the mouse that sneaks out in the night and destroys
where others can’t see. In the cabinets. In the pantry. Behind the stove. In
the basement. In the wall. If left unchecked, a mouse problem will get out of
control. And the problem that once could be hidden, can no longer be concealed.
To stop a mouse infestation, you have to kill
the mice. You have to patch up the path that the mice were using to get into
the house. And then you have to clean up the mess.
Sounds a lot like sin. If you have a sin
problem, you need to stop the sin. And then you need to deal with the path that
is being used in your life to make that sin appealing. And then you need to
start mending all the relationships and damage to your own health that the sin
has caused.
But to move to the mending and damage control
without actually dealing with the sin itself is like cleaning up mouse
droppings in the midst of a mouse infestation. It might help for a day, but as
soon as the mice have their way again in the dark of the night, the cleanup
will have to happen all over again.
And it will start to wear us out until we
reach the point of no longer caring to clean up the mess. Soon, one will find
themselves living in the midst of mouse droppings all of the time. Pretty
disgusting, isn’t it? That’s sin. Filth. Morphing God’s intended beauty for our
life.
If you don’t deal with the mice, Mr. Hyde wins.
Sin must be dealt with when we discover it in
our life. Not tomorrow. Not even tonight. Right now.
Jesus continued in the passage we started
reading earlier:
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’
will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father
who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy
in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in
your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from
me, you workers of lawlessness.’" (Matthew 7:21-23 ESV).
If this passage doesn’t put a spooky, chill
down your spine – If it doesn’t get you alert like an unexpected bump in the
night - If it doesn’t make you wonder about whether you are serving right, then
I’m fearful for you.
These people prophesied in Jesus’ name. These
people casted out demons. And they did mighty works. But they were not right
with God. Jesus said, “Depart from me.” Those aren’t the words I want to hear
when I see Jesus.
God doesn’t care about the greatness of what
you do. He cares about our faithfulness in all the things that we do. Notice
that he says the one who will enter the kingdom of heaven is the one who does
the will of God.
Now, we have this tendency to talk about
works as a bad thing in the church. But that is because we’re hung up on the
question of how can I be saved? What minimal steps do I have to do to be right
with God and enter the kingdom of heaven. God is not concerned about what
minimally saves a person because there is no such thing as a person barely
saved.
Either you are his disciple, or you’re not. This
passage of Scripture has nothing to do with the elementary teaching of what
saves a person. It’s talking about whether you have lived the life of a person
who has been saved. We must be about doing the will of God. If that is not our
focus in every area of our life, then we are living in sin. Mouse droppings.
Filth. It doesn’t matter what job you have that pays your bills – your primary
job, the primary job of everyone who claims to follow Jesus, is to do the will
of God.
Jesus went on:
“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will
be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell,
and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not
fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who
hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who
built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and
beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.” (Matthew
7:24-27 ESV).
If a house has a week point in the
foundation, it will eventually crumble if left unmended. I read an article this
week about bridges collapsing and how they are working on creating a
self-healing plastic. Pretty amazing stuff.
A bridge doesn’t just immediately collapse. It gets a small crack. And this
small crack turns into a larger crack until it reaches a point where it no
longer keeps its structural integrity. The idea of the self-healing plastic is
that it will be filled with a liquid epoxy that solidifies upon contact with
air. The small cracks would then never develop into great weaknesses that would
cause collapse.
If our spiritual house is going to stand when
the rains come and the winds blow, which they surely will, we must make sure
that we are built on the rock. That we do not suffer from any long-term structural
weaknesses.
What is your foundation?
In 1995, they reintroduced
Wolves to Yellowstone park. The last wolf was killed in Yellowstone in 1926.
The unintended consequence of the death of all of the wolves was that the
population of elk and other large animals soared to an unsustainable level for growth
of certain new vegetations. What that means is that the animals were eating all
the young starts and would eventually, if left unchecked, have eliminated
certain species of trees from the forest.
The wolf is now doing its intended job. The
elk population is being diminished to sustainable levels. When a pack of wolves
spots a herd of elk or bison, they only need to kill the weakest one in order
to feed.
Here's a wolf video that illustrates this point.
Be sober-minded; be watchful.
Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. (1 Peter 5:8 ESV).
A lion does the same tactic as a wolf. It
just needs to attack the weakest animal in the herd in order to get a meal.
The same is true with Satan in your life. He
only needs to get you at your weakest point. And boom, death ensues. We, like a
bridge, are only as strong as our weakest point. And if we have a weak point
that Satan can attack, then everything else in our life will crumble.
The problem Dr. Jekyll faced is that he
decided to ignore his dark side. And if you choose to do likewise – ignore your
dark side - , it will be like an infected wound that will fester. The disease
will spread. It needs to be removed. But the longer you ignore it, the more difficult
it becomes until it eventually overtakes all of your health and kills you.
To build on the rock, as Jesus describes,
means that we aren’t like Dr. Jekyll. We aren’t secretly wanting to indulge in
the sins of this world. Instead, we are hearing God’s teachings and doing His
work. And in doing that, we are building on a foundation that can withstand
whatever life will bring us.
I always feel sorry for families who don’t
know God when they go through a time of crisis. And this world will send times
of crisis our way. Being a Christian doesn’t mean that we won’t go through bad
things; it means that when we go through bad things we will have the foundation
built beforehand to get us through in a good state of mind, ready to continue
building on to the house we were working on beforehand. Being a Christian
doesn’t mean we won’t go through bad things, it means that we won’t go through
bad things alone.
Now, it won’t be easy.
Jesus also taught,
“When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it passes
through waterless places seeking rest, and finding none it says, ‘I will return
to my house from which I came.’ And when it comes, it finds the house
swept and put in order. Then it goes and brings seven other spirits more evil than itself,
and they enter and dwell there. And the last state of that person is worse than
the first.” (Luke 11:24-26 ESV).
Satan doesn’t take defeat lightly. He wants
you. He wants you to not focus on bringing about God’s will into this world. He
wants you to be distracted by satisfying every one of your selfish desires. You
might have cast some sin out of your life, but it’s going to try and come back
stronger than before. It’s like a lone wolf who was unable to take you down,
but now he has returned with the pack.
But as that video showed, if you stand your
ground, with Jesus, you can defeat the wolves.
In the teachings of Jesus that we read earlier, we see Jesus teach how to withstand falling prey to wolves in sheep’s clothing – to be focused
on doing the will of God. In the Luke passage, he shares a similar conclusion in this teaching
on the return of the spirits.
As he said these things, a woman in the crowd raised her voice and
said to him, “Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts at which you
nursed!” But he said, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God
and keep it!” (Luke 11:27-28 ESV).
The sad thing about the
story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is that Dr. Jekyll realized his problem too
late. He reached the end and gave up. He said, "I bring the life of that
unhappy Henry Jekyll to an end.” But the truth of the gospel is that sin does
not have to be victorious in your life. The mouse can be trapped. The wolf can
be killed. The crack can be mended. As long as you are still breathing, you can
be who God wants you to be. You can make that choice. You have heard the word
of God. Now it’s up to you to keep it.
