IT'S ALL ABOUT MOTIVE

Isaiah 66:1-24; Philippians 3:4-21; Psalm 74:1-23; Proverbs 24:15-16

“My hands have made both heaven and earth; they and everything in them are mine. I, the Lord, have spoken! I will bless those who have humble and contrite hearts, who tremble at my word.  But those who choose their own ways—delighting in their detestable sins—will not have their offerings accepted. …For when I called, they did not answer. When I spoke, they did not listen. They deliberately sinned before my very eyes and chose to do what they know I despise.

“Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. …I no longer count on my own righteousness through obeying the law; rather, I become righteous through faith in Christ. …I want to know Christ and experience the mighty power that raised him from the dead. I want to suffer with him, sharing in his death, so that one way or another I will experience the resurrection from the dead! …Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us.”

“We no longer see your miraculous signs. All the prophets are gone, and no one can tell us when it will end. …Why do you hold back your strong right hand?... Arise, O God, and defend your cause.”

For many today, it’s a lot easier to identify with the Psalmist than with Paul or Isaiah. We’ve been waiting a long time for Christ to come and set things right. We have examined ourselves and worked to become more like Jesus. We have discipled others and done what we could to enlarge the Kingdom of heaven. We have even endured hardships, more or less patiently. Yet, the Lord continues to tarry and hide His face. For goodness’ sake, what is He waiting for?

Precisely. He is waiting, because that’s what goodness does. Our human desire to see the coming of our Lord in power, judgment and wrath may be exciting, but it also may be the most base kind of selfishness, and we’d best know on which side of the fence we rest. If we are looking for the Holy Spirit to just clean house and wipe out His and our enemies, we are looking for the wrong thing with the wrong set of eyes. We also are grossly underestimating the pain Final Judgment will hold for the Father. No Dad worth his salt would be eager to condemn, however necessarily, any of his children to eternity without him. Our Father is no different there. Long story short, when enthusiasm for the Second Coming is really grounded on our own desire for revenge and retribution, we probably do more to delay the Rapture than hasten it, for our sin and spite means the Lord still has another soul to reach.

It’s like this. I went through college in Texas as a member of a Greek fraternity. The one I finished with, however, was not where I started. I began as a “legacy” in a nationally-recognized fraternity with a deep history of service and brotherhood. Turned out, though, that Chapter apparently had not read their Charter. This Georgia boy had unwittingly gotten himself in with a bunch of dime store cowboys whose main idea of a good time was to haze new pledges to and past the point of actual, personal injury. Hell Week included one little adventure which ended with me literally kneeling in the shower expelling material I’d been forced to eat. Still, I weathered the storm and proved to myself and my legacy I was no quitter. Then, I depledged right before initiation. The stunned outcry was immediate. No one could believe I would quit without giving the new pledges a taste of what had been given to me. Apparently, a major motive for those rednecks was to do unto others as had been done to them. Finally recognizing the sad, petty purpose of this particular group, I offered them the truth. I simply could not call them brothers. Joining another, more enlightened fraternity, I spent the next three years passionately working against hazing and the first fraternity in general. Unsurprisingly, we did not lose a single candidate to them while I was around. I probably saved a number of good young men a lot of grief. But my spiritual growth did not improve one iota. I could dress it up and call it “righteous,” but my zealotry against hazing was far more about revenge than it was redemption.

In the frustration of everyday life – and especially, injustice – we must resist the temptation to take God’s justice into our own hands, even when it seems the right thing to do. I am not saying I was wrong to speak out against the hazing I’d experienced. I was not. I was wrong because my motive of revenge corrupted my purpose into just another flawed, human endeavor. I was not an instrument of the Holy Spirit, although I certainly could have chosen that path. I was, instead, an instrument of simple, human pride and vindictiveness.

Life is all about motive. We can do all the right things, but if it is for the wrong reason, they avail us nothing. This is why God warns us not to judge: we stink at it. There’s nothing wrong with fighting injustice and righting wrongs. But we need to be careful who gets the glory, and on whose timetable we operate. Anytime we substitute our judgment for Jesus’, we are on very thin ice and proceed at our peril, even when we have fooled ourselves into thinking otherwise. Before taking on any spiritual battle, we’d best check with our Savior to assure our motives are pure and our purpose is aligned with His. Close, as they say, only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.