The story is told of a a nineteenth century explorer who had hired a group of African villagers to provide support for an expedition into an uncharted part of the continent. On the first three days of the trek, the expedition had achieved an unexpected rate of speed, which put them ahead of schedule. The explorer was very pleased.
On day four, however, the explorer awoke in the morning to find that the African porters were not preparing to move out. In fact, they told him they were going to stay put. When asked why, they said they had been moving too fast—that it was time to let their souls catch up with their bodies.
It was time to let their souls catch up to their bodies.
Have you ever felt like that? Like your soul, the inner essence of who you really are, is far behind the pace at which your body, the external self that you present to the world, is moving?
I’m going to guess that the majority of you here this morning feel that way. I feel that way. In fact, I think our culture expects us to feel that way because that’s what it means to be an industrious, productive member of society.
I mean, think about this. Someone asks you how you are and you feel obligated to say, “I’ve been very busy. Lots to do, you know. I’m getting a lot of results.” Pastors are notoriously busy, and when we get together we always compare how busy we are and how our busy our churches are. We’re not the only ones, of course. Everyone’s busy. Work keeps us busy, family keeps us busy. Our kids are busy running from one activity to the next and we’re busy making sure they get there. We’re busy, busy, busy.
And we’re tired. I don’t know if it’s true, but it seems to me that one of the most frequently used words on Facebook is the word “tired.” We’re busy and we’re tired, and somehow that has become a badge of honor. If we’re anything else, then we must be slacking off.
When was the last time, for example, that you called up a friend to ask what they were up to and they said, “Nothing”? We’re never up to nothing!
And that’s our problem, says Gordon MacDonald, who wrote the book this sermon series is based on. Ordering Your Private World is a book that’s been around for a long time, and one that I have pulled off the shelf often in my own life…when I’m not too busy to remember.
MacDonald’s thesis is essentially this: we live in two spheres, the public and private. Our public world is the place where we present our external selves (what we might call our bodies) as we want others to perceive us. Our private world is the place where our true selves (what we might call our souls) really live. When our public world and our private world are worlds apart, we can be stretched to the breaking point.
What we need to do, says MacDonald, is to reorder our inner, private world so that our outer world follows. Our souls, in other words, shouldn’t just catch up to our bodies from time to time, but the inner life should determine how the outer life lives, and bring us to the point at which we are whole persons—body, mind, and soul.
One person in history understood this better than any other, and that is Jesus—the one who was fully human and fully divine, the one whose inner and outer worlds were always consistent, and always purposeful. Over the next five weeks we’re going to be looking at some different stories about Jesus and how his private world was ordered as a means of helping us to begin ordering our own.
The story that was read for us this morning—the story of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness—is one that illustrates the first aspect of our private world that needs attention: our motivation. If it’s true that crisis reveals our true selves, then this scene at the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry reveals Jesus’ true self as one who is called, rather than one who is driven.
The story begins with Jesus being “full of the Holy Spirit” after his baptism, and being led by the Spirit into the wilderness for forty days. Now, right off the bat, there’s some significant symbolism here. Jesus is “led” into the wilderness for “forty” days, just as God led the Israelites into the wilderness for forty years. For Israelites, those forty years represented a time of preparation for entry into the promised land. For Jesus, those forty days represented a time of preparation for the journey and ministry he was about to undertake.
The Judean wilderness is nothing like the Colorado wilderness. It’s picturesque, but only in the sense that its total barrenness is strangely beautiful. The wilderness is a desert, which is pretty much like the surface of the moon. There are no places to go, there is no food to eat, there’s nothing but rock and sand. Jesus is out there for forty days with nothing and with no one.
I don’t know about you but I have a hard time with 40 minutes of silence let alone 40 days! Imagine forty days of nothing but prayer, nothing but solitude, nothing by miles and miles of desert, and nothing to eat. To us it sounds absolutely brutal—to Jesus, it was absolutely necessary.
I find it interesting that Jesus didn’t start his public ministry until he was about thirty years old. That’s a late bloomer, even by our standards, but especially in those days when the life expectancy was about 35. You’d think that after thirty years, and after the amazing commissioning he receives from God at his baptism, he’d be ready to march straight to Jerusalem. Instead, he obediently goes into the desert for more preparation and prayer. When everything says “hurry up and get going,” Jesus intentionally slows down. Instead of talking incessantly to anyone who would listen about what he was going to accomplish, he goes out alone and in silence, talking and listening only to God. Instead of busily working to make sure he had all the logistics lined up, Jesus instead fully trusts God to supply his needs. It’s a completely counterintuitive way of understanding success than we’re used to, and it’s counterintuitive to us because we’re more likely to listen to Satan than God—we’re more likely to be driven, than called.
Notice how Satan, the tempter, shows up at precisely the most vulnerable moment, when Jesus is at the limits of his endurance. Jesus is “famished”—completely empty—and Satan comes with a series of three propositions, three temptations that are all about being driven by the outer life rather than the inner life.
Gordon MacDonald writes that people who are focused only on the outer life are those that become “driven”—which is a word that we use in our culture to laud successful people. We see “driven” people as those who are good at getting things done, who have fame and fortune, and who seem somehow to be a cut above. Drivenness, however, is different than just doing one’s best—it’s about projecting oneself to the world in a way that is ultimately destructive.
MacDonald offers seven characteristics of the driven person:
1. Driven people are most often only gratified by accomplishments and symbols of achievement. Badges, titles, positions, status. The more stuff on the wall, the better the GPA, the more pages on the resume, the better the driven person feels—at least until they discover someone who has more.
2. Driven people are caught up in the uncontrolled pursuit of expansion. Driven people aren’t satisfied with the status quo. In a sense, that’s not a bad thing. At the same time, growing a business or a church at all costs can leave lots of casualties in our wake. Driven people tend to like to build their own kingdoms at the expense of others.
3. Driven people often have a limited regard for integrity. Speed and efficiency can lead to cutting corners. Driven people can easily justify making poor ethical choices in order to achieve their ends.
4. Driven people are not likely to bother themselves with the honing of people skills. Driven people tend to use people as a means to an end, rather than seeing them as individuals worthy of attention and love.
5. Driven people tend to be highly competitive. It’s not enough to compete. Driven people have to win, no matter what it takes to do so.
6. Driven people often possess a volcanic force of anger. Driven people don’t take criticism well because it challenges their perfectionistic image of themselves. Criticism about something we have done gets translated into a value judgment on us as a person. Driven people tend to respond to an attack with overwhelming emotional firepower.
7. Driven people are usually abnormally busy, are averse to play, and usually avoid spiritual worship. They are working all the time because their image of themselves depends on it.
Do any of these sound familiar to you? I know they do to me. Throughout my life I have had to fight the tendency to be driven, and when I’m not paying attention to the inner life I can easily go back there.
Notice that the three temptations that Satan offers to Jesus are, essentially, temptations to lead a driven life. Each of them begins with “If you are the Son of God…” which can also be translated more definitively, “Since you are the Son of God…” Satan is playing on Jesus’ title and wants Jesus to think about redefining it in terms of drivenness. After all, God’s son should certainly be able to take care of his own needs by turning a stone into bread. God’s son should want to have the glory and authority over all the kingdoms of the earth, especially if it means avoiding all that painful suffering that Satan and Jesus both knew were ahead. Why not be king now instead of later? And, surely, if Jesus wanted to impress the people with his power, why not jump off the high point of the Temple and land unscathed? They’d certainly worship him then. Satan is laying before Jesus a program that a driven person would jump at—the quick route to success, the glory of fame, the power that comes from being liked by people for what you can do for them. Jesus could be a very busy and successful Messiah, if he would only play the game.
But Jesus doesn’t buy into that program. He has waited for thirty years and forty days and is not in a hurry. He’s not driven. He’s called.
Called people, says Gordon MacDonald, are those who understand that the key to life is an ordered inner life and who understand their lives as being part of the larger purposes of God.
1. Called people understand stewardship. When driven people lose things—especially status or the symbols of material success—it is a crisis. When a called person loses things, nothing really changes. In fact, the private world becomes stronger. Jesus goes into the desert with nothing, and yet sees that as gaining everything because he is one with God.
2. Called people know exactly who they are. Jesus had come to the desert straight from his baptism, where God’s voice said, “You are my Son, the beloved. With you I am well-pleased.” He knew who he was. We know who we are, too, because Jesus himself has named us. We are children of God. We do not need to craft an identity, we already have one. We are beloved, no matter what we accomplish.
Knowing who we are takes some deep reflection. We are never as good or as bad as we think people see us. Called people define themselves according to their relationship with God, valuing God’s love and grace-filled approval over any amount of applause.
3. Called people possess an unwavering sense of purpose. Jesus understood that his mission was about bringing the kingdom of God to bear through his life, his teaching, his death, and his resurrection. He was able to challenge Satan with Scripture because he understood that Scripture’s story was reaching its climax in his own person. He was able to say no to that which was not his purpose. Called people do a lot more listening than talking…a lot more reflecting than pontificating. Called people choose their time and priorities according to their purpose.
The ability to say “no” is one of the keys to a private world that is in order. We say “yes” to the things that accomplish God’s purposes, and “no” to the things that distract us. More on that next week.
4. Called people practice unswerving commitment. Luke tells us that after Satan tempted Jesus three times, Satan “departed” from Jesus “until an opportune time.” This wouldn’t be the last temptation for Jesus to be driven. When was that “opportune time?”
“If you are the King of the Jews, if you are the Son of God,” they shouted from the foot of the cross, “then save yourself” (23:32-43). Even at the end, the temptation was still there.
How could Jesus have endured all that for us? Only by having a very ordered private world—one that led him to walk away from the crowds and go into the hills to pray, one that led him to focus on people in need as though they were the only ones present, one that ate with people who could not benefit his cause in any way, one that enabled him to wrap a towel around himself and wash the feet of his disciples like a servant.
That’s the kind of private world I want to cultivate. How about you?
How do we do it?
First, I think we have to recognize and repent of the drivenness in our own lives. Again, we’re not saying we shouldn’t do our best, it’s just that we should be doing things for the right reason—to glorify God and work for his kingdom.
Secondly, we need to create space for God, which means that we manage our time well and we work at taking Sabbath rest. We’ll talk about those things in this series, things that I want to work on myself.
And third, and perhaps most importantly, we need to remember who we are. We are God’s beloved! We are not beloved because we are perfect. We are not beloved because we have lots of degrees on the wall or money in the bank. We are not beloved because we’re better than anyone else.
We are beloved because we belong to Christ. We are beloved, so much so, that he took his mission all the way to the cross.
He calls us to follow him, but we can’t do that until our souls catch up with our bodies. Amen.
