An Enemy on the Inside

This morning, I came across this shocking news story about a Polish man who leads an institute investigating war crimes from World War II; evidenced has surfaced of him offering the Nazi salute, and making statements sympathetic to Nazi beliefs: https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/europe/.premium-head-of-polish-institute-researching-wwii-crimes-photographed-giving-nazi-salute-1.9559008

Right away, I thought of the irony of this man leading an organization designed to fight what he believes. My guess is that he’s a mole – intentionally placed there in order to thwart the work of that institute! How fitting an illustration this is of the internal battle we all have with sin. We can’t trust our own hearts to lead us in the right direction, because they are deceitful above all things (Jeremiah 17:9, Genesis 6:5). There’s an enemy on the inside – our flesh! There’s a battle between the flesh and the Spirit within us (Romans 8:4, Galatians 5:16-18, 2 Peter 1:4). Paul himself shared openly about his internal struggle (Romans 7), but he reassured us that the same Jesus who forgave our sins will rescue us “from this body of death” when we trust in him (Romans 7:24).

An Illustration for our Sinful Nature

My wife just sent me this article about a man who committed a carjacking, only 20 minutes after being released from prison: https://abcnews.go.com/US/man-back-bars-carjacking-16-year-girl-20/story?id=75901321

It made me think of our sinful nature and its persistence (Psalm 51, Jeremiah 17, Romans 5, Ephesians 2), as well as Paul’s frustration in Romans 7 about frequently returning to the sin he hates. This story could also illustrate the ongoing battle of the flesh vs. Spirit in Galatians 5.

One thing I know that I would need to guard against in using this illustration is making it humorous. Although the story is definitely ironic, I wouldn’t want to encourage people to laugh at this man’s sin, to mock his situation, or to swell up with pride in our own hearts about how we think we aren’t like him. But for the grace of God, there go I.

The Presidents’ Club – Bay of Pigs

Still reading The Presidents’ Club.  Here’s another illustration from it: John F. Kennedy inherited a really tough situation when he came into office.  Eisenhower had started plans to undermine Castro through military training for Cubans living in Guatemala.  However, the planning and preparation began to move beyond Eisenhower’s original ideas, and American involvement became deeper and more advanced.  In the transition period between presidents, the planning picked up momentum and took on a life of its own.

Kennedy came in and didn’t want to cast aside the brilliant general’s plans, but he modified the plan enough (removing air strikes, for example) that it was definitely doomed to failure – as history proved.  Along the way, he was given a LOT of bad advice by his top advisors.  However, when the Bay of Pigs Invasion turned into a tragic fiasco, Kennedy stepped up and took full responsibility.  He refused to blame Eisenhower or his advisors; he openly admitted that as president he had made the call and that he would take the blame.  Significantly, this seems to have benefited Kennedy in two ways: 1) his popularity just TWO weeks after the Bay of Pigs debacle was shown by a Gallup poll to be 83 PERCENT (p. 143 of the book), and 2) it seems (in my opinion) to have set Kennedy up for his success during the Cuban Missile Crisis.  I think manning up in the Bay of Pigs failure personally and internally prepared Kennedy to face down Khrushchev, and it might have helped Khrushchev take Kennedy seriously when he did so.

I think this is a good potential illustration for passages that deal with honest confession of sin, openly dealing with mistakes or sins you have committed, and being a responsible steward of what we’ve been entrusted with.  Some passages: Genesis 3 (as a contrast to the blame game played by Adam and Eve), Psalm 32, Psalm 51, Matthew 18, and Matthew 25:14-30 (Parable of the Talents).

Getting to the Root of the Problem

My Honda Pilot’s map light went out, and you don’t realize how much you use those until they die.  I didn’t know how to change the bulb, so next time I went in for some other maintenance work, I asked the service representative to have it fixed.  He comes back a little bit later and tells me that it is not a bulb problem; instead, the socket itself has a short and needs to be replaced.  It would’ve been over $1oo and I was already having some other expensive work done, so, needless to say, my map light is STILL out.

I could have replaced bulbs in that map light 100 times, but until I got down to the real problem, the map light would not have worked.  The bulbs not lighting up was just a symptom of a deeper problem.  We try a lot of things to give us happiness, forgiveness, peace, and fulfillment, but nothing is going to work until we get past the symptoms and deal with the ROOT of the problem.  Only the gospel of Jesus Christ does that.  The Holy Spirit has to come in and rip out that old nature (like the shorted-out socket) and put in a whole new nature.

This could work with Jeremiah 31, Ezekiel 36, 2 Corinthians 5 (especially verse 17), Hebrews 8, and a lot of other passages dealing with sin, regeneration, and the gospel.