Bad Advice, Pt. 2: How to Become An Addict

February 12, 2017                     NOTES NOT EDITED
Bad Advice, Pt. 2:  How to Become An Addict.

Luke 15:11-31

SIS: Jesus alone is Our Master and we must never allow any other habit or action to take His place.

Many years ago I read something that sticks with me to this day.  It is a bit of sage advice.  I’ve seen hundreds of people ignore this advice, and the end of the matter for every one of them has been, disappointment.

Someone once said, “The Devil pays well, but he always pays in counterfeit money!”  I’ve found this to be true.  It is a popular way of restating something the Bible says, “Stolen bread [sin] tastes sweet but it turns to gravel in the mouth” (Prv. 20:17, NLT).

Sin is a deadend road—always!  The Devil’s lies lead to addiction.  Addiction works, because at first sin tastes sweet, but once the Devil gets his claws into you, life takes a bitter turn toward the town of Horrible.

When we think of addiction we think primarily of “substances” like heroin or alcohol.  There are many other addictions like pornography and coffee.  There’s also an addiction to work.  Soap operas were an addiction for many women in my Mom’s child-rearing days.

An addiction can be almost anything.  Addictions take hold because they seem to pay huge dividends in pleasure.  But, as we noted above, “The Devil always pays in counterfeit money.”  What began as perhaps an innocent pleasure becomes a never-ending nightmare.  I’ve seen addiction close up and personal.  It ain’t pretty. 

Nobody takes a drink with the hope of someday losing everything and living in a doorway on Skid Row. Nobody takes a puff on their first cigarette hoping to someday develop lung cancer.  Nobody pops a pill or shoots heroin in the hopes of one day living in a rodent infested flop house with other junkies.  No, the Devil never shows someone the end of the road of addiction, only the bright lights of the first party.

Anything can be an addiction.  Caffeine, dipping snuff, chewing tobacco, social media, Starbucks, or Pokemon.  The list is endless.  Anything that gains significant control and mastery of one’s life is an addiction.  Here’s what Paul has to say about being mastered by sin:

¹² “Everything is permissible for me”—but not everything is beneficial. “Everything is permissible for me”—but I will not be mastered by anything (1Cor. 6:12, NIV)

The word translated, “mastered,” (controlled, CSB) is a long Greek word, exousiasthesomai, which literally means “to be enslaved by.”  I’m sure that you know enough from history to understand that being a slave was a hard and painful life.  When we let ourselves become addicted—to anything—that which we are addicted to becomes the “master” of our lives.  And, addiction is a master that gets crueler with each passing day.

So, the question becomes, “what is mastering you? and me?”  If the master of our lives is not 100% the Lord Jesus Christ, then we are serving an idol.  A slave cannot be “partly owned by the master.”  It is all or nothing.  The Bible says (Mat. 6:24),

²⁴ “No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.

The core issue of addiction is idolatry—plain and simple.  Idolatry is allowing anything else but Jesus Christ to hold any amount of control over our lives.  Addiction is idolatry because it is “seeking to find in something else, that which only God can give!”

I can actually show you a picture of someone who is addicted.  Here’s the picture of the “Human Ken Doll,” Rodrigo Alves.  He has had over 50 plastic surgeries totally more than $400,000 in the quest for the perfect face and body.  In a recent article, a reporter who interviewed the Human Ken Doll reported:  “Rodrigo completely rejects the claim that he is addicted to plastic surgery.” 

People can be addicted to anything.  Someone once asked me, “Will cigarette smoking send me to hell?”  The common preacher response is, “No, it will only make you smell like you’ve been there!”  I have known people who were addicted to tanning salons.  They tan so much they look like an old suitcase!

So, what’s mastering you?  What’s your addiction of choice? Maybe it is “shopping.”  Some people eat to find comfort.  Some people shop.  Maybe you are that rare person who has no addiction—but you would really like one.  You are that person who says, “I’m tired of being blessed by God, I want to have a taste of misery.”  Or maybe, you have a fantastic marriage and you are saying, how can I get hooked on pornography, wreck my marriage and become a disgrace to my community.  Well, if you are that person.  I’ve got “Bad Advice” for you.  Here’s the path toward addiction—follow the Prodigal Son!  LET’S READ Luke 15:11-19.

1.  The first step down the path to addiction is Distance Yourself From Godly Influences (Lk 15:11-13)

¹¹ He also said: “A man had two sons. ¹² The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the estate I have coming to me.’ So he distributed the assets to them. ¹³ Not many days later, the younger son gathered together all he had and traveled to a distant country.

I think it is very significant that the Lord described the young man as travelling to a “distant country.”  Sin always takes you “away from the Father.”  The Devil is an opportunist.  He always picks the low-hanging fruit and seeks to exploit the weakest target he can find.

When lions hunt together, like many pack animals, they try to isolate a member of a herd from the safety of the group.  The further a gazelle or other prey gets from the herd, the easier they are to pick off.

This is why one of the first steps toward addiction is to separate from godly influences of friends and family—and especially separating from the family of God. 

I was once asked by a church leader—who didn’t like me and looked for any way possible to discredit me—if her homosexual son would be welcome in the church.  I had not been at that church very long, but long enough for her to see I held a biblical view of sexuality.  She felt it was perfectly acceptable to God to be a homosexual.

Well, if I answered, “no, he would not be welcome,” I would show myself to be out of step with God Who declares, “Come unto me ALL ye who are weary and heavy laden.”  If I were to answer, “Yes, he would be perfectly welcome,” she would have simply pulled out a tape of a message where I quoted the Bible as saying, “homosexuality is an abomination.”  I wasn’t going to win this argument either way.  What I did say is this, “A homosexual would be perfectly welcome to attend church, but not likely to stay once the Bible was preached!”

You see, the church family will help keep you away from sin, and sin will most certainly keep you away from the church family.  So, if you want to indulge in your addiction, the first step is to Distance Yourself from Godly Influences.”  If you need help with this step, just refer to last week’s message that demonstrated “how to give in to temptation.  The process was:

            --Neglect Special Times With the Lord

            --Hang Around the Wrong Crowd

            --Give In to Temptation

            --Love the World More than God

Addiction is much easier in a “distant land” away from the light and love of godly friends and families.  Sin grows best in the dark!  If you want to indulge your addiction, get away from any godly influences.  Become a mushroom.  Mushrooms grow in the dark.  Oak trees grow in the light.

2.  Seek Happiness Not Holiness (Lk. 15:13c)

He squandered  his estate in foolish living.

The Bible doesn’t spell out exactly what the young man’s “foolish living” entailed.  King James translates this term as, “riotous living.”  The New Living Translation calls it, “wild living.”  In college lingo we might translate it, “frat parties!”  I don’t know what exactly the young man indulged in, but he did a lot of it.  He was so “wild and riotous” that he “squandered, or wasted” his entire inheritance, which the context implies was quite a sum.  We see from the party that the father throws upon the Prodigal’s return that the father was a man of great means and much wealth.

Addiction seeks pleasure.  That’s why they call the feeling drugs produce a, “high.”  People do drugs, or drink alcohol, or eat donuts because it makes them feel good.  It makes them “happy.”  Twenty-four hundred years ago, Aristotle understood the “power of pleasure” as a motivation for man.  Pleasure played an important role in Aristotelian ethics, though riotous, reckless living was not what Aristotle had in mind.

Even the birth certificate of our nation, the Declaration of Independence, declares that the “pursuit of happiness” is an inalienable right.  So, you have Aristotle’s permission and the sanction of the Declaration of Independence to “seek happiness anywhere and anyway you can find it!” But, do you have God’s permission?

The biggest lie perpetrated on the modern church by so-called “Health and Wealth Preachers” in the tradition of Kenneth Copeland, Norman Vincent Peale, Creflo Dollar (quite a name for a health/wealth preacher), Joel Olsteen and a whole gaggle of others, is that “God’s greatest concern is your happiness!”  I am telling you that “God did not send Jesus to die on the cross so you could be happy—but, so you could be HOLY!”

It would appear that the Founding Fathers did our nation a great disservice by including “the pursuit of happiness” along with “life and liberty” as “inalienable rights granted by our Creator.”  Were the Founding Fathers the one’s providing the foundation for “health and wealth” preaching?  The answer is “no.”  It is clear that the Founders, nearly all 200 of them, firmly stood on the Word of God and they realized that “happiness is a by-product of holiness.”

The pursuit of happiness, without the pursuit of holiness, will always end up in emptiness and disappointment.  Look at verse 14:

¹⁴ After he had spent everything, a severe famine struck that country, and he had nothing.

Here’s where seeking happiness instead of holiness is going to lead you.  I’ve often said, “Sin always takes you further than you wanted to go, costs you more than you intended to spend, and keeps you longer than you planned to stay!”

Now, here’s the point where you can really “nail down your addiction.”

3.  Dive in Deeper!  (Lk 15:15-16)

¹⁵ Then he went to work for one of the citizens of that country, who sent him into his fields to feed pigs.  ¹⁶ He longed to eat his fill from the carob pods the pigs were eating, but no one would give him any.

He is a splendidly addicted Jewish boy—neck deep in pig poop!

If the Devil would have shown the Prodigal the pain at the end of his travels instead of the pleasure at the beginning, the Prodigal would never have left the homestead!

For three years I ministered every third Friday at the Open Door Mission on Skid Row in downtown Oakland, California.  Skid Row is where addiction slides into the gutter.  I still have many of the sights and smells of that place in my mind. The sights and smells of the Devil’s rejects.  Even the Devil didn’t want anything to do with them anymore.  He had taken everything they had to give.  All that remained were empty, broken, disappointed lives.

They were men and women (and sadly children brought along for the ugly ride) who had listened to some very “Bad Advice.”  And, all they had to show for it was disappointment.  They lived lives of disappointment so deep in the pig sty of despair, that they now felt at home “living like pigs,” just like the Prodigal.

The last, most precious possession they had once had, vanished like an early dew in the bright morning sunlight.  They no longer had hope.  Addiction had robbed them of this last, precious gift, and the Devil had substituted disappointment.

They were much like a forlorn, pessimistic Army Airborne Ranger who was learning to parachute.  His sergeant barked out four simple steps to a successful jump from an airplane:  1.  Jump when you are told to jump;  2.  Count to ten, then pull the rip cord;  3.  If the first chute doesn’t open, pull the second rip cord;  4.  When you land, a truck will bring you back to the post.  When the plane got over the landing zone, the Jump Master yelled, “jump,” and the pessimistic jumper, jumped.  He counted to ten, and pulled the primary rip cord.  Just like he expected—nothing happened.  He pulled the second rip cord.  Again, nothing happened.  Being the pessimistic person he was, the young paratrooper in training muttered, “Great!  I’ll bet the truck won’t be waiting for me, either!”

Addiction is decorated with disappointment.  It will suck the hope out of you as surely as the Sahara will suck the water out of your skin.  This is why, when an addiction gets a death grip on someone’s life, they just dive deeper into the mire and muck of addiction.

Now, the evidence for despair is not always physically noticeable.  A shopaholic will not have needle marks on her arm.  Caffeine won’t give you the tell-tale pock-marked face of a meth addict.  But, I assure you the despair of a person addicted to shopping is as deep as the person addicted heroin. 

If you let the addiction go long enough, whatever it is, it will totally obliterate any blessing God would seek to send your way.  When any addiction takes hold, the person the addiction is holding will be totally blind to seeing the eternal cost of letting anything, or anyone, but Jesus be the Master of one’s life!

Perhaps the best bit of “Bad Advice” I can give you on “How to Become An Addict” would be to urge you:

4.  Don’t Listen to the Voice of Reason—It will be there, just don’t listen to it!  (Lk. 15:17)

¹⁷ When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have more than enough food, and here I am dying of hunger!

I have always been intrigued with this part of the story.  I am most amazed by what it does not say.  It does not say, “He came to his religion.”  He came to “his senses.”  Follow me here:  it makes good sense to repent of your sins—drop the addictive idols of your life—and return to the Father, Who is waiting for you!

it makes good sense to repent of your sins—drop the addictive idols of your life—and return to the Father, Who is waiting for you!

I used to spend many hours studying the different “answers to skeptics questions.”  I have a degree in philosophy of religion with a specialty in apologetics—the science of giving reasonable answers to why one believes in God.  In the final analysis, the best “reason” I can give for why one should believe in God is because:  “it’s plumb crazy not to!”

That may not be theologically sophisticated, but if the story of the Prodigal’s Path to Pain Through Addiction teaches us anything it teaches us that “Sin makes you stupid!”

Life controlled by any Master but the Lord Jesus Christ ends up as a train wreck.  We become like helium balloons set loose on a windy day.  We have no direction and it is only a matter of time before something bad happens.  It makes “no sense” to let anything but Jesus master our lives.

There is no meaningful way to make sense of life without God.  As C.S. Lewis so brilliantly declared, “I do not believe in the sun because see it’s light, but I believe in the sun because by its light I see everything else.”

It only makes sense to repent, that is turn from your sinful addiction, and return to the safety and security of the Father.  The “Bad Advice” of the Devil is:  “Don’t listen to the voice of reason!”  As simple as it may sound, the bottom-line is:  “There can’t be a ‘big bang’ unless there were first a Big Banger!”

This is why the Bible declares without any qualification:   The fool says in his heart, “God does not exist.” (Psalm 14:1).

The Devil wants you to be stupid, and to act stupid.  He knows if you ever come to your senses, no bonds of addiction can hold you!  You CAN be holy.  And being holy, you WILL be happy.  The Devil knows this.  The Devil knows that when you cast yourself at the feet of the Lord Jesus Christ and declare Him, and Him alone, to be your Master—nothing can control you.  You have THE POWER.

For though we live in the body, we do not wage war in an unspiritual way,  ⁴ since the weapons of our warfare  are not worldly,  but are powerful  through God for the demolition of strongholds. We demolish arguments ⁵ and every high-minded thing that is raised up against the knowledge of God, taking every thought captive to obey Christ (2Cor. 10:3-5).

I’ve talked with many people struggling with addictions ranging from heroin addiction to addiction to Starbucks.  The particular “drug or behavior” of choice is not the issue.  Sin is the issue, and Jeus is the solution.  I’ve had many people say, “Pastor, I just can’t do it,” meaning they could not break their sinful habits.  Hallelujah!  That’s what it means to “come to one’s senses!”  We can’t break the strongholds on our own—but, praise God Almighty, He doesn’t expect us to.

The Prodigal came to His senses and realized He had to “turn back” (repent) to the Father.  When the Prodigal repented, the shackles of his addictive lifestyle were absolutely shattered.  Here’s what happened next (vv. 18-24):

¹⁸ I’ll get up, go to my father, and say to him, Father, I have sinned  against heaven  and in your sight. ¹⁹ I’m no longer worthy  to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired hands.’ ²⁰ So he got up and went to his father. But while the son was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion.  He ran, threw his arms around his neck,  and kissed  him. ²¹ The son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight. I’m no longer worthy to be called your son.’  ²² “But the father told his slaves, ‘Quick! Bring out the best robe and put it on him; put a ring  on his finger  and sandals  on his feet. ²³ Then bring the fattened calf and slaughter it, and let’s celebrate with a feast, ²⁴ because this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’ So they began to celebrate.

If ever a hymn were written for a “sin-addicted sinner stuck in the mire and muck of the Devil’s pig sty,” it would be this hymn:

Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling—

Calling for you and for me;

Patiently Jesus is waiting and watching—

Watching for you and for me!

Come home! come home!

Ye who are weary, come home!

Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling,

Calling, O sinner, come home!

We are all “addicts” of one sort or another.  We all stand guilty of allowing something, or someone, other than the Lord Jesus, to become the “master of our lives.”  Today, the Word of God begs us to “repent and return to the Lord.”