Sermon Tone Analysis

! My dear Wormwood,

I hope my last letter has convinced you that the trough of dullness or “dryness” through which your patient is going at present will not, of itself, give you his soul, but needs to be properly exploited.

What forms the exploitation should take I shall now consider.

In the first place I have always found that the Trough periods of the human undulation provide excellent opportunity for all sensual temptations, particularly those of sex.

…But there is an even better way of exploiting the Trough; I mean through the patient’s own thoughts about it.

As always, the first step is to keep knowledge out of his mind.

Do not let him suspect the law of undulation.

Let him assume that the first ardors of his conversion might have been expected to last, and ought to have lasted, forever, and that his present dryness is an equally permanent condition.

…Another possibility is that of direct attack on his faith.

When you have caused him to assume that the trough is permanent, can you not persuade him that “his religious phase” is just going to die away like all his previous phases?

…The mere word phase will very likely do the trick.

…You see the idea?

Keep his mind off the plain antithesis between True and False.

Nice shadowy expressions—“It was a phase”—“I’ve been through all that”—[and] don’t forget the blessed word “Adolescent.”[1]

That, of course, is C. S. Lewis in his little book entitled, /The Screwtape Letters/, an imaginary correspondence between a more experienced demon named Screwtape and his younger protégé, Wormwood.

One of the most remarkable things about the book, from Lewis’ perspective at least, is that he found it almost effortless to write.

“…I had never written anything more easily,” he says in the Preface, “[though] I never wrote with less enjoyment.”[2]

“…it was easy to twist one’s mind into the diabolical attitude, [but] it was not fun, or not for long.

The strain produced a kind of spiritual cramp….

It would have smothered me before I was done.

It would have smothered my readers if I had prolonged it.”[3]

That tendency toward spiritual asphyxiation, I suppose, bears testimony to the reality of the spiritual conflict about which he was writing—the same spiritual war that the apostle Paul teaches us about in the text that we’ve read this morning.

But far from giving him a spiritual cramp, it seems that the subject of spiritual warfare is one that fuels Paul’s pastoral zeal and concern.

For instance, you can see that concern in the very first word of this section.

The NIV translates it “Finally.”

“Finally, be strong in the Lord….”

But the Greek word could be translated, “for the rest,” or “from now on.”

In other words Paul is not merely drawing his letter to a conclusion; he’s telling us how we must live from now on, until, as he said in the first chapter, God brings “all things in heaven and earth under one head, even Christ.”[4]

And you can see his pastoral concern in the way that he repeats that word “stand.”

“Stand your ground” he says in verse 13.  “Stand firm, then,” he says in verse 14.

But perhaps you can see Paul’s pastoral concern for his original readers and for us most clearly in the way he so is so insistent that we “put on the full armor of God.”  Did you notice as we read through the text how he repeats himself?

He says it first in verse 11 and then again in verse 13.  “Put on the full armor of God,” he says.

“Put on the full armor of God.”

Now, why does Paul repeat himself in these ways?

Well, remember this military metaphor—the armor—is drawn from Paul’s own experience.

As he writes this letter, he is imprisoned, chained to a Roman soldier.

Paul had plenty of time to reflect on the similarities between the physical battles in which that soldier would have been engaged, and the cosmic struggle in which he and his fellow believers are engaged against the world, the flesh and the devil.

In other words, he knows the critical nature of the battle.

More than that, Paul knows the law of undulation.

He knows that human spirituality in general, and Christian spirituality in particular, is subject to unpredictable patterns of ebb and flow.

Like waves on the sea, our love for God tends rise and fall, doesn’t it?

Our devotion to Christ goes through periods of exhilarating progress followed by times of bewildering decay.

Years ago Chuck Swindoll wrote a little book entitled /Three Steps Forward Two Steps Back/.

That’s the law of undulation.

You can see it in the life of David, for instance, in the Old Testament.

Once, when his faith was vital and his conscience was tender he snipped off a corner of Saul’s robe (apparently to prove that he could have killed Saul if he’d wanted to) only to be conscience-stricken about it later.

/“The Lord forbid that I should do such a thing to my master, the Lord’s anointed,”/ he said.[5]

But years later, after committing adultery with Bathsheba and murdering her husband in an effort to cover it up, he kept silent about his sin for perhaps as long as a year, until it was finally brought out by Nathan’s confrontation.

David’s devotion to God had obviously decayed significantly, hadn’t it?

You can see the law of undulation at work in the lives of almost every patriarch and good king throughout the Old Testament.

And in the New Testament you can see it at work in Peter’s experience, can’t you?  Peter, who once was granted the extraordinary insight into the identity of Jesus as the Messiah (“You are the Christ,” he said, “the Son of the living God.) —Peter, who saw the divine glory of Jesus on the mount of transfiguration—Peter, whose name means “rock,” –Peter turned to mush when a servant girl accused him of being with Jesus.

He denied Jesus three times.

Certainly that has to be the low point of Peter’s relationship with Christ, isn’t it?

And if you and I are honest we’ll have to admit that the law of undulation is at work in our own lives, won’t we?

I know that some of us here this morning have found ourselves in what the Puritans used to call ‘a declining state of grace.’

Not so long ago, perhaps, the gospel of grace seemed extraordinarily sweet and beautiful to you.

Not so long ago, perhaps, you were filled with a joy and delight in God’s grace in Jesus Christ.

Your safety, happiness and eternal enjoyment of God’s love seemed to you as unchangeable as God himself.[6]

Not so long ago, when you read texts like Romans chapter 5 verse 1 where Paul says, /“…since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,”/ it made your heart soar.

But now something has happened.

You find it difficult to taste the sweetness of the gospel now.

Your past joy has been replaced by an immense heaviness.

Your assurance of God’s love has become plagued by doubts and fears; and you wonder if this must be the state of your soul from this day forward.

What has happened to all your joy?

What has happened to your delight in the Lord—and in the gospel of grace?

O yes, Paul knows the law of spiritual undulation—certainly from Scripture as well as his own experience.

And Paul knows that the devil seeks to exploit our periods of spiritual decay.

The devil tries to persuade us that, when we find ourselves in the Slough of Despond, we will never be able to climb out and that our love for God was, after all, “just an adolescent religious phase.”

That, I want to suggest to you, is at least part of the reason that, like any responsible preacher, Paul repeats himself here.

“Put on the full armor of God,” he says.

“Put on the full armor of God.”

It is because he knows that our hearts are subject to a kind of recurring spiritual decay.

You and I must continually put on the armor of God.

And when our armor is damaged in battle it needs to be repaired so that we can be ready for the next “evil day.”

If you are a professing Christian and you haven’t experienced this yet, then it’s because you’re either a very new Christian or, I’m afraid, a somewhat naïve one.

C.

S. Lewis is right; there is such a thing as the law of undulation.

“Man is a giddy thing,” said Shakespeare; but in Christian experience that giddiness is not merely a principle of human nature; it is aggravated by the spiritual warfare in which you and I are inevitably engaged.

Now, what I’d like to do in the time that is left to us this morning is to help us to be prepared for the Lord’s Supper by exploring two questions:  First, what are the signs of spiritual decay?

In other words, what are the signs that your armor is in need of repair?

How can you tell that the vitality of your relationship with Jesus Christ is in decline?

And, secondly, how can you recover from that decline?

How can you repair your armor and get back into the battle?

And it’s my hope that, by the end of our study, some of us who are in the midst of spiritual decline may see that it is possible for your experience of vital communion with God to be restored.

First then…

!

What are the signs of spiritual decay or spiritual decline?

Well, before I tell you what the signs are, let me say something about what they are not.

First, a stronger sense of your own sin is not necessarily a sign that you’re in spiritual decline.

You shouldn’t think that, because you have a greater sense of your own personal moral failure that you are, therefore, in a state of spiritual decay.

Perhaps you’ve recently begun to see your pride and self-righteousness and judgmental attitude more clearly than you had in the past.

Perhaps you’ve recently begun to see the ways in which your bitterness and gossip and slander has broken relationships and harmed the church.

Well, that’s not necessarily a sign that your relationship with Christ is falling apart.

On the contrary, far from being a sign of spiritual decline, it may be a sign of spiritual growth.

It may be a sign of God’s grace at work in your life, to help you see yourself more honestly and repent of your sin more sincerely.

Do you think those things weren’t in you before you saw them?

Of course they were!

They were there all the time.

And it is a sign of God’s grace that he has shown you your sin.

Suppose you’re traveling down the highway in a thick fog at night.

Your headlights can barely penetrate the mist.