06/30/91

“He that hath no rule over his own spirit is like a city that is broken down and without walls.”

(Proverbs 25:28)

There seems to be no end to the TV newscasts that shock our consciousness with hideous pictures of bomb-blasted cities in Iraq and Kuwait. We have looked until we are sick of the sight of ragged, broken masonry, smoke-blackened walls, twisted steel girders, rubble-strewn streets, and in the midst of all that desolation blood-stained bodies lying limp in the gutters.

Pictures of a city broken down, without walls, drives home to our consciousness the horrible, utter desolation of modern warfare and the even more deplorable defeat, desolation and defenselessness of the human victims of war. We are reminded of similar pictures we have seen of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Coventry and Cologne, Stalingrad and Saigon, Beirut and Panama.

But the Sage of Proverbs, in our Old Testament lesson this morning reminds us that the picture of a city broken down and without walls is also the picture of a man who cannot control his own spirit. Listen: “He that hath no rule over his own spirit is like a city that is broken down and without walls.”

“When a city is broken down and without walls it is exposed to the attacks of the enemy from every quarter; it is without defense and without security; it offers an easy prey even to the feeblest assailants. Precisely so is it with any person who has no rule over his own spirit: he is excited by the smallest provocation; losing self-control, he loses what little wisdom he has gathered from experience, and so he becomes a prey of the enemy and is brought into complete destruction.” (Joseph Parker)

In college I knew a young man who had a wonderfully strong and beautiful body. Crack basketball and football player, this young athlete made All-Southern and was mentioned for All-American. God gave him a body that was big and strong and healthy, and altogether the best coordinated and smoothest operating piece of human machinery I ever set my eyes upon. But this young man did not take care of the body God gave him. He dissipated his strength — gave full reign to his animal appetites. Powerful physically, he seemed to have no strength of inner spiritual control. And what happened? Though that magnificent physique could take a terrible beating — stand up under all night drunken debauches and play scintillating ball the next day — at last even that Herculean strength cracked — his health failed, and when he was injured internally in a highway accident, a hurt from which any normal, healthy person could have rapidly recovered, this young Sampson, who was already shorn of his strength and sick from dissipation, died. What was wrong? Oh, “He that has no rule over his own spirit is like a city that is broken down and without walls.” We realize how true this is for the poor fellow who can’t, or doesn’t control his lower, baser passions, but sometimes we don’t see any special danger from failure to control our spirits in other quarters.

Dorothy Sayers, the British detective storywriter, whose character, Sir Peter Whimsey, has become almost as famous a fictional detective as Sherlock Holmes, has also distinguished herself as a writer of helpful treatises on Christian living. She wrote one called, The Other Six Deadly Sins, in which she pointed out that we all tend to emphasize one sin — namely lust — so much as to create the impression that there are no others, although the church has always maintained that there are seven deadly sins.

And in ancient times Christian church people talked much about these seven deadly sins. They even named them: lust, gluttony, anger, pride, sloth, envy, covetousness. They put them in the catechisms and taught them to their children and warned them to beware of these seven deadly sins. Why were they called “The Seven Deadly Sins”? Oh, because they would destroy people — kill them dead. Not just lust, but any one of them was deadly. And Christian living meant so ruling over one’s own spirit as to refrain from committing any one or all of these seven deadly sins so destructive to the human soul.

But as for us, we don’t take very seriously all that seven deadly sin stuff. Look at anger for example, or as it is more often called nowadays by its more gentle name, “temper.” Does anyone really believe that losing one’s temper is a sin? Is he that has no control over his temper as a city that is broken down and without walls?

A New York minister, hastening by taxi to an important interview, was caught in a Fifth Avenue traffic jam. For fifteen minutes they never moved an inch. The minister said that the Scotch blood in his veins was deeply stirred as he sat there watching the taxi meter click round and round with the mounting costs and no movement forward. Finally the traffic began to move again. Suddenly a taxi from behind swept round and crowded in front of the taxi in which the minister was riding. It was a rude thing to do. It would get almost anyone’s dander up. When the next traffic light caught them, the minister’s driver pulled alongside the fellow who had crowded him out, lowered his right front window and proceeded to hurl across at his colleague in transportation some very descriptive adjectives. Mad? That taxi driver was a red-hot furnace! He drove on up the avenue muttering and cursing to himself.

Presently the minister spoke to his driver: “My man, you are working yourself up unnecessarily. The traffic jam was bad, but after all, it didn’t cost you anything. You will collect your full fare. I am already 20 minutes late to an important engagement. Just look at what you are doing to yourself. You are burning up your energy, running up your blood pressure. You are an ugly sight and I dare say you’ll not be fit for anything worthwhile the rest of the day, simply because you allowed yourself to go into a temper tantrum. You must learn to control yourself.” The driver didn’t say anything then, but when the minister got out at his destination a few minutes later the fellow spoke rather softly: “I’ve learned something today. I’ll remember it.”

Yes, temper can cause a lot of trouble. “It is in a home what a toothache is in the body: the pain is insufferable and yet it is not treated as serious.” “The wrathful man does much mischief to many, but his wrath is like an old blunderbuss, which, when it was fired, hurt the bearer almost as much as the enemy. It might fail to hit the mark, but it was sure to knock down the marksman.” (R. F. Horton on Proverbs)

Then there is envy or jealousy. Not very serious you say. A mother is just jealous of her son’s devotion to his wife — a father is jealous of his son — a wife is jealous of her husband’s attention to his brothers and sisters. So it goes, and there are some hurt feelings and ugly things said, and much pouting. But what serious havoc it can work! I have seen people caught in a crossfire of jealousy which so tortured and distracted them till they were driven to the very verge of suicide.

But however much harm jealousy and envy do in wrecking human relations, the envious and jealous spirit is most destructive to the heart that harbors it. Sometimes our jealousy hurts others — even those we love — but it always hurts us. While we are being jealous or envious, the power of our spirit is being burned up, exhausted in negative, unproductive energy — which could be used for good.

You remember that King Saul’s troubles began when he became envious of David, his son-in-law and chief champion. When the people gave more glory to David than to Saul on the occasion of the victory over Goliath and the Philistines, Saul grew green with envy. He began to throw spears and things at David. There was the end of a fine friendship. David was driven away from his wife, Michael, Saul’s daughter. David and Saul’s son, Jonathan, who loved each other better than brothers, were parted by Saul’s envy and jealousy. All this misery and woe in human relations flowed from Saul’s uncontrolled envious spirit — but the greatest damage his envy did was to Saul himself. It drove Saul mad, insane.

I can remember hearing my teacher in Seminary, Dr. Julian Price Love, say that when he was a young man and went before Presbytery to be taken under its care as a candidate for the ministry, one old minister asked him a question whose full significance did not dawn for many a year. “Young man,” he asked, “when you see others doing good, does it make you happy?” Yes, that’s the question for all of us. For any person that hath no rule over the envy and jealousy of his or her spirit is like a city that is broken down and without walls.

And so it goes for all the seven deadly sins: lust, gluttony, anger, covetousness, sloth, pride, envy. They are all afflictions of the unrestrained spirit — and all are deadly. And he that hath no rule over his spirit — no restraint — he is as a city that is broken down and without walls. He is spiritually defenseless, defeated, whipped, destroyed.

Where then is control to be found? How is one to learn to rule over one’s own spirit? The Book of Proverbs doesn’t tell. It simply states that the man or woman who can’t rule that spirit within is as a broken city and without walls. It diagnoses our trouble but prescribes no cure. Let the truth be said plainly and bluntly — no one of us has within one’s own self the innate power to rule that spirit. These wild, wanton spirits, who can tame them?

You will perhaps remember Soren Kierkegaard’s parable of how the human spirit is controlled. Once there was a wealthy man who ordered a pair of fine coach horses, thoroughbreds, with the desire of driving them for his pleasure. When they arrived they were the finest horses in all the countryside. No horses had such shiny black coats, were so sleek and well groomed, so thick of chest as they. No horses held their heads so high, trotted so fast, or had such fire in their eyes as these horses. But the rich man knew nothing about driving those thoroughbreds. He held the reins slack in his hands when he went riding about the countryside. He let the horses follow their whims. In a few weeks that fine pair of horses were unmanageable. They had lost their gaits. They grew dull of eye, they dropped their heads, and they could not run so much as a quarter of a mile without getting winded. In all the neighborhood they were the worst looking and acting horses flesh to be seen.

In despair, the rich man sent for the king’s coachman to see what ailed his fine thoroughbreds. The king’s coachman began to drive the horses each day and within a few weeks they regained their former gaits and beauty, fire and endurance. The difference? The owner had driven the horses according to a horse’s understanding of what it is to be driven, while the king’s coachman had driven them according to the understanding of a royal coachman’s understanding of what it is to be driven.

“Come unto me,” says Jesus, “and take my yoke of discipleship upon you.” That is: “Be harnessed for driving with my hand on the rein — for I am meek and lowly in heart and you will find rest, comfort, control for your spirit.” Yes, that’s how our wild spirits are mastered and ruled by Him whom God has made our Lord and Master.

Jesus brought from beyond this sin-tainted world this locale where the sternest and most imprisoning restraints are enslavement to selfish passion and cruel inhumanities to others. He brought here an allegiance to a foreign power, and intense patriotism to a monarch of the cosmic world of everlasting light where there is no darkness of sin. He showed mortal men and women how to make those beautiful movements of freedom, those expressions of love and fealty which were most native to our human nature before the curse of sin twisted and blighted our beings.

Someone has said that “the only freedom any person has is the freedom to choose the servitude to be entered, the Master to be served.” The grandest service is the service of Christ, and by a strange paradox, slavery to Christ is the greatest liberty.

          Make me a captive, Lord,

          And then I shall be free;

          Force me to render up my sword

          And I shall conqueror be.

“And now unto Him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy; to the only wise God our Savior, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and forever. Amen.”

PLACES AND DATES PREACHED

First Presbyterian Church, High Point, N.C. — May 22, 1949

Youth Conference — Kings Mountain. Presbytery, Mitchell   College, Statesville, N.C. — 06/29/48

Randolph Church — 07/03/49

Crestwood Church — 07/10/49

West End Collegiate Church, New York City — 07/17/49

Queens College — Religious Emphasis Week, Charlotte, N.C. — 03/19/50

Allen Jay High School Baccalaureate — High Point, N.C. — 05/21/50

East Hanover Youth Conference, Hampdon Sydney, VA — 06/23/53

First Presbyterian Church, Earle, AR — 08/08/82

First Presbyterian Church, Rosemark, TN — 06/30/91

• Scripture Reference: Proverbs 25:21-28 • Secondary Scripture References: n/a • Subject : Self-control; Self-discipline; Self-denial; Self-transcendece; Free will; 627 • Special Topic: n/a • Series: n/a • Occasion: n/a • First Preached: 5/22/1949 • Last Preached: 6/30/1991 • Rating: 2 • Book/Author References: , Joseph Parker; The Other Six Deadly Sins, Dorothy Sayers; Proverbs, R. F. Horton; , Soren Kierkegaard