Course: Spiritual Life of the Leader

Lecture 9: The Eight Deadly Sins (Part 1)

The eight deadly sins are in the order that Satan uses to try to get us and in the order in which we need redemption. Gormandize means you are overdoing it and being a slave to flesh. Fornication refers to a wandering heart and seeking to devour others. Avarice is the love of money and sometimes is a fear of not having enough. Anger is a rancorous spirit. The spiritual cancer of depreciation is looking at the vast horizon of God’s goodness in his creation and my life and depreciating it, only seeing what’s wrong. Psalm 51:10-12, create in me a clean heart, O God and renew a right spirit within me.

I. The Order is Important

We don’t want any of our lives to be an example of what it should not to. We want our lives to be examples of grace and redemption. We don’t want any of these eight deadly sins to get a hold on us. Many of you have possibly heard about the seven deadly sins which have a completely different order and actually came later in church history. A man by the name of Gregory the Great, somewhere after the year 590, he took this list and revised them and put them into this new list. He starts out with pride, but I actually like the original list as being better. For those of you who are historians, there is some Greek or pre-Christian thought in this. The early church took the best of that and said that Jesus spoke about these things as well. I don’t want to mislead anybody in saying that this just dropped down into the early church. This list has been spelled out by John Cashion so that we can understand them. It is interesting that the list starts in the order where those early fathers say that Satan tries to get us with. They start in the order in which we need redeeming and that are important to us. I want us to understand them. All of you have heard of the term gourmet, a French term. Now, who doesn’t like gourmet cooking?

A. Gluttony

But the Latin had a kind of bad term associated with it, called gourmandize, which means that you are eating too much. It is excessively devouring food. It simply means being a slave to food. When I came to this beautiful home, all of us were presented with a living example of gourmandize, having a box of fine German chocolate. And I must admit this can be my down fall for I just love dark chocolate. Well, the Holy Spirit just tells me that I have had enough, stop! You have to break this sin first. If you can’t break gluttony, this overly desire for food and tame that in your life, then you are never going to be able to overcome fornication. You are not going to be able to work through that. The way out for gluttony is appropriate fasting. You learn to let the Holy Spirit to say no in your life. Many of the early church people actually fasted Wednesday’s and Friday’s but then it changed to Friday’s to Thursday evening after a normal meal to the time Jesus died at 3 pm on Friday afternoon. That was a normal fast. They also said that you don’t have to have gourmet food either, having common food is good and right. The key is success.

B. Fornication

This is preying and seeking to devour others. Part of what we have got to realize, particularly in pastoral ministry, you move into a full blown adulterous relationship without even touching someone physically. When any pastoral leader works into a place of depending upon a female, for example, drawing strength from her and develops a tight communion with her and draws from her an intimacy which really is inappropriate. In other words, she cannot be my primary strength; she cannot be my primary relational go to person. That is as big a fall as anything which ends up in a physical relationship. We want to be really clear here for men, never to touch a woman in an inappropriate way. We are called to guard our hearts to where we don’t develop those types of relationships that replace the primary spouse relationships. I have done enough work around the world and there are women pastors everywhere now. They should know that any problem that any male has ever had works itself into female lives now. I have had to deal with devastating issues where female pastors end up in a physical adulterous affair. More and more, I am having female students coming in hooked on pornography and having to be delivered from that. This isn’t at the same rate as males but it is high. So, what is the word from the early church? Chased love! I love the other for God’s sake. I am seeking her good or his good and he or she is not there for me to devour.

C. Avarice

Avarice is the love of money. It hits pastoral leadership in a number of ways and wiithin the majority of leaders, avarice will represent a fear of not having enough. That is a great tool of the devil because he will gouge you by saying, ‘what if, what if?’ What if you can’t cover this? What if in your old age, you don’t have enough? I have also seen it work the other way where pastors who are paid enormous salaries. Avarice is basically saying, ‘how much money is enough?’ How much is enough; just a little more. The healing bomb was property of spirit; that deep realization that my well-being and my goodness is found in Christ alone and in Christ alone I can never accumulate enough to secure myself against the wealth of the world. It is like what King David said, ‘as for me, I am poor and needy.’ Now, David wasn’t an impoverished person. He was a wealthy man and had a fairly significant military force around him. But he knew that because he was a sinner, he stood in need of God, his love and covering, his savior. All of us in many parts of the world today and even though my wife and I were poor pastors, compared to most of the world today, we are incredible wealthy people.

D. Anger

I don’t have any right to be angry at anyone except myself. I sometimes think that we need to take exception to that; there is a Godly anger, there is a righteous angry and sometimes the man or woman of God needs to take that up and be lovingly firm. There is a good word on this; anger for most of the time is a massive red flag. It says more about us and our demand to have the world ordered to our standards rather than anything about God’s righteousness. The remedy is simple to cut it out; Paul had strong words for us as well as Christ also had strong words for us. We need to stay focused on the redemptive power of Christ and the anger of a person doesn’t work the righteousness of God.

E. Vainglory

This is basically being impressed with ourselves, thinking that we stand out by doing things really well. After preaching, people often say how great that particular sermon was, etc. It is like a friend of mine being introduced with glowing and flowing language. He got up and said how much he appreciated the introduction but that it is like French perfume, it smells good but if you drank the stuff, it would kill you. So vainglory is drinking the perfume. It is only the Lord who allows us to do any good. In other words, it is because of the goodness of God that I am able to do good for others. Pride, of course, is the destruction of the human person which is the very definition of Satan himself. Pride, essentially, says God, I don’t need you, just forget it.

II. Two of the Most Destructive Deadly Sins

That is a brief overview of those sins, but now I want to go more in-depth concerning two of these deadly sins which absolutely ravage pastoral and congregational leadership. You would think that I would have gone to the hot sins of pornography or gluttony or Fornication. Of course, Satan will wheel that weapon as much as he can and it has taken out many of the saints and eliminated them from leadership. I highly recommend works by Gordon McDonald, just a phenomenal leader of the 90s. He wrote a best-selling book called, Ordering Your World. After that, he had an affair and had to enter into a fairly serious remedial process. He wrote another text after that called Reordering Your Private World. I think this one is the better of the two texts. This is an excellent word on recovering from a collapse. I think the bigger issue for us today is more along the sadness and the despair.

A. The Spiritual Cancer of Depreciation

There is a place called Sandia in the mountains of New Mexico that provides an incredible view, no matter which direction you look. It is at about ten thousand feet up and it offers an unusual geographical outlook. In looking out from that vantage point, you see the amazing beauty of God’s creation. It is a beautiful extended horizon that stretches endlessly in a circle. When something appreciates what does it do? It increases in value. But when something depreciates, it goes down in value. We will be looking at the vast horizon of God’s goodness in the world and in his creation and in my life and then in depreciating it, we look upon this horizon and we begin to see only what is wrong. It is a huge issue in the church today.

1. Forced Detachment Crisis

It is a tragic biblical account of this with Michal. Now, I know there are some Hebrew scholars out there, but I am telling you that I am a West Texan and I cannot properly pronounce some of these Hebrew words. You will see in 1 Samuel 18:20 that Michal loved David. Okay, who wouldn’t love David? He was tall, strong, and handsome and a hero. David was a young unmarried national hero. He had been out in the sun all of his life; he had a sun tan with flowing hair; just a tough looking military guy. So he was the prize catch in the whole nation. Michal, of course, is Saul’s daughter; she is the king’s daughter. She is kind of a prize catch herself and she loved David. And Saul gave her to David in marriage. Saul was so threatens by David that he hated David; he used his own daughter as a snare against him. After Michal saved David from the hand of her father, Saul did a mean and cruel thing. He was supposedly a man of God which the Holy Spirit had departed from. He took his daughter and gave her in marriage to another man. At this point, we want to have a huge empathy for Michal. And before we go further into her actually life and situation that unfolds; she was genuinely violated by others. In other words, people abused her; her own father abused her. She truly was victimized by others. We are going to hear a fairly hard word about Michal as this biblical account unfolds.

After Saul and his son Johnathan died, David demanded Michal back. I’m not a hundred percent sure if this was a completely pure act on David’s part or if he is just trying to unify the kingdom. But whatever the case was, we know that he ordered her be brought back from which she is now married to another man. So Michal’s second husband, Paltiel, follows her back and she is being forced to return to David. He was weeping as he walks behind her. It was not the best of circumstances; she loved him and he loved her. And now what is called a forced detachment crises. The crises hit, under this forced detachment, there was nothing they could do about it. They had to literally let go of each other. At some point in Michal’s life and her heart, things became dark and hatred filled her life. Few people haven’t experience this forced detachment crises. It is when something is ripped away from you and it wasn’t right. How many pastors have I talked to who were forced to leave this or that congregation? Sometimes, it was nothing other than a cruel power play by only a small number of people. Or, what about a disease that suddenly pops up and you have to let go of everything; the vitality you had. What about tragic accidents? When you live in a fallen world, it is waiting and groaning for redemption, and then these kinds of tragedies take place.

2. The Freedom to Say ‘Yes’ to what God is Asking You to Go Through

And what we learn of people who were thrown into Nazi Concentration camps, in the final analysis no one can take away the basic freedom that you have. This freedom allows you to say yes to what God is asking you to go through or simple deny and rail against God and life’s circumstances. My mentor in the faith hid Jews during WWII and he had to go through the entire duration of WWII under Nazi occupation. He dared to print a newspaper of which he would have been shot on sight. He would have been shot for hiding them in farm houses and bringing them food.

3. Adrian van Kaam

During the hungry winter of 1944-45 which was one of the coldest winters in the history of Europe. Adrian van Kaam lived on about 400 calories a day eating tulip bulbs while living in barns and open fields dodging Nazis tyranny that they faced. He lost everything and the people around him lost everything they had. One hundred and fifty thousand people plus, died from starvation in Holland. He was not emancipated until May 8, 1945; the last day of the European war. So it is out of that kind of struggle where you learn that in the midst of having lost everything, Adrian was able to look up and acknowledge to God that he was going to bring purpose into his life. And I know that you are going to bring your will to come to bear, even in this horror. So we have to take the firmness of the Lord here; particularly when bazaar suffering comes upon us and it’s unjust and not right and not deserved. Michal’s heart filled with darkness and hatred. In the final account of Michal, we know that David was going up the temple mount. He was dancing before the Lord as they brought the Arch of the Covenant to Jerusalem. It actually seems that David was dancing in his underwear before the Lord. So, Michal is looking out at him and that is it for her. She despised David in her heart. Who did it end up eating alive, David or Michal? No, it ended up eating her alive and that is what anger does to us. If we don’t ask Christ to help, it will eat us up. If we don’t have a sense of assurance that all things will be sat right when the kingdom comes, this anger will eat us up. Sometimes, I look back over my pastoral ministry and I think of those who abused me. I remember those who even physically hit me; it is all going to be resolved. I ask Jesus to have mercy on me for those who I have hurt. And so, Michal, the daughter of Saul had no children to the day of her death. She was barren in the broadest sense; without any kind of fruit in her life and without any kind of love and goodness. The bitterness she experienced sank her own life and her heart.

B. The Deadly Sin of Tristitia

God calls us to a higher way. He calls us to a more complete way. I remember during the worst of Iraq war when my own son would sometimes call from a satellite phone. We kept our phones by our side day and night during that war. One time he called us and I heard gun fire in the back ground and my son said that this happens all the time. Then the satellite phone went dead; he was in a branch of special services. During that time, I was driving to work one day. I was a man of the Gospel, a Christian for decades and a Muslim woman cut in front of me in a bazaar dangerous way. It was clear that she was an immigrant and that she didn’t know how to drive. For a moment, I was facing her driving. She had cut from the right hand lane and had turned her car sideways. She looked at me just as I thought that I was going to drive into her car. There was something in my heart that wanted me to step on the gas petal to intentionally harm her. When that happened I had to pull over. How can I allow that kind of hatred, that kind of depreciation in my life? I asked for forgiveness. There were people trying to kill my son; they were Muslim radicals trying to kill my son. Some of his best friends came home in a box in that time. Our hearts were broken over this. But the man and woman of God is not called to let anger rule in their lives. And now when I see any Muslim, the call is for God’s love to be about them and for God’s light to show them the way. We read story after story of Jesus, literally appearing in dreams and visions to Muslim people. We want to pray for the light of the Gospel to come into their lives. So, I think the call of the Lord for us in a world that is polarized and where political structures seem to be collapsing; where society seems to have massive erosion going on in terms of values. And in terms of having anything other than shear narcissism in egotism of rule and reign in society. I cannot allow my heart to get up into what is wrong; the Gospel will not allow me. I have to find a way forward in all of this. In finding the way forward, I think the Lord will speak to us about how we tend to speak ill of our circumstances.

1. The more you talk about what’s wrong with your life, the more exaggerated it becomes.

It is like throwing gasoline on a fire. There is a sweet Anglican lady in England by the name of Esther Duvall. She trained at Oxford; and is one of the greatest writers in the world today. I have one of her texts and this one text is about seeking God in the way of Saint Benedict. It’s just a wonderful way for Protestants to go back and claim the first fifteen hundred years of church history. The first fifteen hundred years of church history belong as much to us as to anybody else. You and I can learn from people like Benedict. Esther says that complaining can easily become a habit. It becomes part of your personality to gripe and gripe all the time. It is essentially destructive and distracting from the value of everything and everyone around us. It is not the way for us. Remember that great horizon that I was talking about; when you complain you begin to narrow it down to where you are only seeing what wrong with the horizon. I was up walking on Sandia Peak. A friend and I would go up and prayer walk praying over the city of Albuquerque, New Mexico. We walked by a tour bus load of people. They were all pointing out to the Southwest and saying how terrible. I looked out and only could see goodness in every direction. So I looked out to where they were pointing and saw a thin pencil line of smoke where someone was burning some tires. They were only focused on this pencil line of smoke. And I thought that this is what happens when we get to focusing on what is wrong in our situation. You take the vastness of God’s good work in our lives and slam it down to the pencil line of what isn’t going the way we want something to go in our lives. It is then that the pencil line starts growing on your horizon until at some point, it is all you see. Paul tells us to put it away from us. Put this corrosive evil and abusive language in Ephesians 4. Get rid of it and cut it out. Bitterness is a bad term; it is that bitter gall that come up from inside. It is wrap and anger and slander and malice; this is not what we walk in, even when people abuse us.

This is not what we walk in. Colossians 3:1-3 says to seek the things that are from above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. This is particular true for those leaders in the Gospel. How can we begin to regain God’s good and beautiful horizon, that vast horizon where he is at work in the world, holding all things together and bringing all things to a glorious conclusion in the second coming and the coming of the kingdom and its fullness. We need to hear the call to repent of dark attitudes and words and actions; all of these things that tend to pull us down in that downward spiral that we have been talking about. We need to move into humble dependence upon the Lord. Can we not even pray together aloud, ‘create in me a clean heart Oh God and put a right Spirit within me. Do not cast me away from your presence and do not take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore me to the joy of your salvation and sustain me in willing Spirit.’ Amen! Let it be Lord. Paul says to put these things on; put these appreciative clothes on. This is beyond the armor of the Spirit that Jesus gave us. This is a way of living in Christ. This is what the man and woman of God does who is in Christ. Put these things on. Whatever compassion comes down to, it is a sense of having mercy on those who are fallen, even as Jesus has mercy on me as a fallen person. Mercy is in the realm of totally unmerited. Eleos, mercy, and do I deserve this? No, I don’t deserve it; that is why it is grace. It is given to me because who God is, not because how bad I have been. Thank the Lord that he has been gracious, kind and merciful to me. Humility, for the best of us is realizing that I am totally dependent upon God.

The Lord Jesus is good and is at the right hand of God the father, interceding for us and pleading our cause. He is the one who dispenses grace and sends the Holy Spirit to assist us to be able to follow him. That is called essential humility; I cannot do anything in ministry without his help. I cannot be an effective person without his redemptive help. There is meekness, the power that comes through throwing off pretense. In the beatitudes, the meek inherits the whole earth. Everything good belongs to those who don’t have to put pretense that they are something which they aren’t.

2. All the Eight Deadly Sins Reside in You.

In the early years of my pastoral leadership and my salvation, I had a lot to learn and grow into then. In the early years of that growth, I really didn’t think of myself as a sinner. As a leader, I really thought of the sheep, the people in church, as the sinners and they needed what I had to say. These are things that you hate to admit but as an old man, the truth will come out anyway. The Lord said that I need to put myself into that category as well. I had to understand that I need grace in my life just as much as the people in my congregation need grace. The key for me was reading John Cashion who said that the beginning of holiness is the realization that all of these eight deadly sins reside in my life. What is Paul’s basic understanding? He used a couple of interesting words and one of those is protoss meaning first or primary or main one, the chief of sinners. I’m the protoss of sinners. He said that he was the least of sinners. There is safety in the true understanding here that as a leader I am called to be involved leading and blessing others with God’s grace. But I need to understand that I’ve got to receive that grace as well. You need to put the clothes of patience on, especially with difficult people. I also had to come to a point in pastoral leadership of realizing that some of those who had arguments with me, that it wasn’t going to be resolved in this lifetime. I have just got to wait and trust the Lord Jesus in the final coming; he is going to have to work it out. People end up hating me sometimes. This is part of what it means to bear the cross of Christ. At the same time, you don’t want to set yourself up with any kind of victim mentality. And you want to be very careful; just because you receive critique doesn’t mean it is a bad thing. All leaders need to have critique. That is part of it, but you have to have wisdom in discerning whether there is truth or not truth at all. You have to bear and trust that Jesus will sort it all out. So, we forgive others; we pray that the Lord to forgive us our debts and this load of sin we have. Also we forgive those who have debts against us. We are to actively seek to love others in Christ. We really need to process what has been said here.

So where are you in this story? Are you Michal, filled with bitterness and the whole horizon has just shut down and all that you see is what is wrong. Are you at a time and period of grief and lost where something that you loved has been taken away from you such as your health or a person or a position. Is there genuine grief going on? With David; I am not assured that David didn’t have harshness in the way he dealt with Michal.