This is the manuscript version of the first lesson I taught in a three-part series to the adult Sunday School class at the Bible Church of Buena Park in February of 2003. The second and third lessons are also available.
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It’s been a few months and more since Phil first asked me to be one of the Sunday School substitutes during tax season, but as recently as last Sunday, I was still trying to come up with my first message. For the past three weeks, I’ve had a fairly clear idea of the questions I wanted to address but very little idea what the answers would actually be. Well, here, I am. My exploration is over, for the time being, and now it’s time to share what I’ve learned. As best I can tell, this morning will be the introduction for the two lessons to follow, and starting next Sunday, I move into uncharted territory. My teaching resume is about two-lines long and this is the first time I’ve attempted anything like a series, so lets see what happens.
Before I get into the heart of our lesson, I want to begin by trying to recount my own thought process as I wrestled with choosing a topic for our time together. It has been such an evolving process that I think the destination will make more sense if you can see the steps that led me here. As I mentioned at the outset, I’ve known of this opportunity to teach for a while now, but I‘ve had a difficult time coming up with a clear outline for what I wanted to present. The more thought I gave to it, the more varied my ideas became. It wasn’t until receiving the passing counsel of a friend that I gained anything like a clear direction (though that clarity didn’t last for long). Knowing me well, he counseled that teaching a series of lessons provides an opportunity to explore a subject on a deeper level than if I were teaching a single message. Therefore, I should choose a line of study that I’ve already wanted to pursue and use the teaching opportunity as a front, of sorts, for the necessary study.
That advice appealed to me immediately, in large part because I have a very long “to do” list, so to speak, and very short amounts of free time. Those who know me best know that I am a project man. Whether it’s a blessing or a curse, it’s sometimes hard to say, but I am perennially churning through new ideas...book ideas, movie ideas, design ideas, website ideas, outreach ideas. My computer has so many bits and pieces of stories and concepts that it’s hard to keep track of them all (if only I was as adept at their completion as I was at their conception).
So how does all this relate to this morning? Like this. The project that has been nearest my heart of late is one that has been on my mind for almost three years now. It is a website I’ve named SoulSatisfied.com. Don’t bother looking for it, it’s not up yet. After three years of sporadic R&D, I still don’t have anything to share with the public. Maybe this will be the year. So, what is SoulSatisfied? What’s the concept?
Here it is in a nutshell. I want to build a professional grade, full-featured, interactive and animated website that presents the gospel as clearly and accurately as humanly possible...solid design and solid theology. Nothing like that exists on the web today, and to me, that is a major missed opportunity. Sure, there are a handful of gospel tracts that have been converted into web pages, but I haven’t found anything that begins to utilize all that web distribution has to offer for the proclamation of the massive and glorious salvation call. It is true that the gospel is a simple message, but it is deep and so prone to confusion and abuse. If you just make it a four-point sales pitch, which some tracts seem to do, you will likely do more harm than good. I want SoulSatisfied to combat that sort of shallow presentation without compromising the simple beauty of the gospel message. By one man sin entered into the world, and by one man there is forgiveness of sins (Romans 5:18,19).
As the name suggests (and I’m slowly bringing us back around to this morning) I want SoulSatisfied to present union with Christ as reward and not as sacrifice. I want SoulSatisfied to break through all the lies and misconceptions concerning the relationship between God’s glory and man’s desire. I want to point out that all of us, you and me, black and white, men and women, young and old, educated and ignorant, Christian and pagan, we all want the same thing because we were all created by the same being. We all want to be happy, even though we employ so many different means in pursuit of that one end. I want to tell the unbelieving world that it isn’t that their desire for pleasure is too strong. Rather, as C.S. Lewis profoundly points out, they’re desire is too weak. They sell out for useless and fraudulent and damning pleasures which are snatched from their hands before they’re ever realized. I want SoulSatisfied to be an Ecclesiastes for the hungry soul, to proclaim with King Solomon, that every single worldly pursuit is vanity and chasing after the wind. We were made for one thing...the glory of God, and we will find satisfaction no where else. Were that the world knew that. Were that I knew that.
For those who heard me teach this class last year, this line of thinking should sound familiar. In some ways SoulSatisfied is to be the evangelistic version of those lessons. My April message argued that the Christian life is not primarily a life of sacrifice but a life of reward. Yes, we are called to give up all the junk in the world which would destroy us anyway, but what do we gain? An eternity of perfect peace and rest, fellowship with the living God. That is not a sacrifice! My June message dealt with the fact that God’s love towards us is not such that He makes much of us, or exalts our worth, but rather it is the stripping away of all the things in our life which keep us from seeing and beholding His glory. God loves us best, when He glorifies Himself the most.
So, all that to say, that, thanks to my friend’s advice, I finally knew, or so I thought, what I would present to you in our weeks together: an exposition on the glory of God and the satisfied soul, how it relates to evangelism and how it relates to our own growth in sanctification. Well, my plan didn’t last for long.
Sitting down to begin my study for the first time, I was almost immediately struck by one of those miserable moments of self-realization where I suddenly felt like a complete and utter hypocrite. My intention, you see, was to articulate this beautiful theology of reward and delight, about loving God for the sake of God, about finding your soul’s greatest fulfillment in the only thing that can fulfill your soul. But sitting there at that moment, at 6:15 in the morning, tired and weary, those seemed like very foreign concepts. For all my talk of “Desiring God”, all I wanted to do was to get back in bed.
I didn’t get back in bed, I kept reading, but I felt the heavy weight of competing desires, desires that I would have much rather pursued. As I sat there, I thought of the nature of my own affections. What are the things that I most desire to do... spend time with my family, watch a movie, read a book, work on the computer, go out to eat, see my friends, go to sleep...or spend time with my Savior? If I’m honest with myself, my time with the Lord rarely thrills my heart so much as so many lesser pleasures do.
So what is wrong with me?! Is the notion of the fulfilled soul just a theoretical hoax that has no bearing in the real world of sickness and alarm clocks? For all my talk, is prayer and study and obedience still motivated by duty rather than delight, and if it is how can I change that? I need to change that (by the grace of God)!
