When I talk with modern men who dismiss God without a second to even consider him, I cannot help hearing a herd of cows mooing upon a hillside. These scientifically minded men (they claim) live to stare at the patch of grass in front of them and call the scheme real life. That is all they can prove exists, after all. They can feel the field under hoof, chew the cud in their mouths, feel the rain upon their backs — these are objective realities.

They show no interest in anything beyond their immediate experiences and senses.

Sure, crows may bring them tales of mighty birds exploring worlds above the clouds, or rumors of far-off sea kingdoms and mythical beasts buried in water, or even of goats prancing upon mighty rock hilltops in the skies — but they see no towering mountains, nor swelling oceans, nor lofty heights — nothing to even suggest such a possibility. Foul tales from fowls is all; ravens raving ill dreams. Cows who live to watch the skies have more than sun dropped in their eyes.

Myths and stories, like viral diseases, infect some in their farm society, but not them. Some hoot and chirp and baa of worlds elsewhere. But claiming to be wise, they always knew some chickens are a few eggs short of a dozen; some pigs hit their heads rolling in mud; some horses will remain unbridled. Truth be told, if these dreamers did not bring ethical claims with their feverish imaginations, they might deserve pity. Who wouldn’t mind worlds beyond this? But reality, they’ve come to know, is less enchanted. These hills and gates and patches of mud are all that have been or will be.

Foundation of Reality

We live increasingly in a culture of cows. These do not need to cling to children’s tales or superstitions. They know the world is not flat. Science and reason solve mysteries formerly left to religion. Now we have morphine and highways and YouTube. As David Wells stated of our modern world, “The hand that gives so generously in the material realm also takes away devastatingly in the spiritual” (No Place for Truth, 56). What spiritual realm? many even ask.

But such questions are nothing new. “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God,’” wrote the ancient poet (Psalm 14:1). They cannot tell us who or why man is or how he got to this hill — but here he is and here he remains. Nothing lies above or beyond his existence on this patch of earth. He has bravely looked the situation in the face and contents himself to live head down, grazing this world for all it’s worth, unbothered by distant horizons. Out of sight, out of existence.

Christians know better. We understand that the physical realm — full of bones, flesh, trees, stones — is derivative of the spiritual. It must be so, for the God who created the physical is spirit (John 4:24). His immaterial speech created the material world; the invisible begot the visible. “By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible” (Hebrews 11:3).

But we must ask how much of this secular spirit we have unknowingly adopted. Here is probably the most important question you will be asked today: What is most real to you — this world or the next? What holds greater reality — the seen or the unseen? What is more ultimate — this physical realm or the spiritual?

“Can your life be explained apart from faith in God and the Lord Jesus Christ?”

You don’t necessarily need to tell us; your life answers well enough. Where do you spend your attention, energy, affections, time, talents? Can your life be explained apart from faith in God and the Lord Jesus Christ?

This can be a Copernican revolution, or a caution and reminder, if you accept it: The invisible world — the unseen, untouched, unmeasured — is most substantial, most enduring, most real. The immaterial world does not orbit our physical realm; the physical orbits the immaterial. Theirs is the unyielding reality; we inhabit silhouettes and shadows.

People Who Saw the Invisible

Faith, in other words, tells us that the world is turned upside down, flipped inside out. Faith does not regard the physical as unreal or unvaluable simply because it is physical — what the apostles saw with their eyes and touched with their hands is paramount to their witness to Christ (1 John 1:1). But faith sees beyond to the unseen. It demotes this world — its values, its dictates, its desires — in preference for the world to come. And it waits for this current physical world to be remade into that place where spiritual and physical perfectly abide: the coming New Heavens and New Earth.

Our spiritual forefathers — though without flushable toilets and supercomputers — knew to give precedence to the just-out-of-view, and wagered their very lives upon it. The history of the saints in Hebrews 11 shows the contrast of sights.

They were convinced of things they hoped for, were assured of things they could not yet see (Hebrews 11:1). Noah, for example, spent decades building a boat on dry land, preparing for the unseen flood. Abraham looked upon the only home he knew, turned his back, and wandered into the unknown to live in tents. He and Sarah then eyed wrinkled skin and aged bodies and waited to see children more numerous than the stars. Moses gazed at the shackles and the scarred backs of the Israelites and chose these over the gold coins, luxuries, and lush pleasures of Pharoah’s house — “for he looked to the reward” and “endured as seeing him who is invisible” (Hebrews 11:26–27).

Others gazed past beatings and mockings and jail cells and death in this world to see a resurrection to a higher life (Hebrews 11:35–36). Salvation from their God was more real than swords of the enemy; conviction about the Christ felt more solid than their chains. They were those of whom this world was not worthy (Hebrews 11:37–39).

“These all died in faith, not having received the things promised,” the writer admits. But notice their vision: “Having seen them and greeted them from afar,” they “acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth” (Hebrews 11:13). Their hearts smiled as they bowed into the grave because they saw promises coming. Promises more powerful than death. They declared plainly that they sought the life over the hill, their distant homeland (Hebrews 11:14). And their God did not disappoint, and will not disappoint them, when they awake in the better country they longed for, a city built by God, a heavenly one (Hebrews 11:14, 16). Do you see as they did?

This World, a Dream

This passing world is the phantom, the shadow. While great things are gained or lost in its short span, this age will soon break upon eternity as a tiny bubble against the rock shore. This life, so fragile, so fleeting. “Man is like a breath; his days are like a passing shadow” (Psalm 144:4). The wind passes over us, and we are gone (Psalm 103:16). Only a few more sunsets, a couple more nights of sorrow, a handful more days of laughter, and you will be gone. To chase this world and all its pleasures is to chase nothing but the wind.

“This age will soon break upon eternity as a tiny bubble against the rock shore.”

What is coming, what is near, what is not yet seen with physical eyes is most real. Light and momentary were Paul’s calculations of all his heaviest sorrows compared to the nearing “eternal weight of glory” for Christ’s people (2 Corinthians 4:17). He saw as we must see: “We look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:18).

So what now? Henry Scougal paints it perfectly when he writes in a letter to his friend,

We must therefore endeavor to stir our minds towards serious belief and firm persuasion of divine truths and the deeper sense and awareness of spiritual things. Our thoughts must dwell on divine truths until we are both convinced of them and deeply affected by them. Let us urge ourselves forward to approach the invisible world and fix our minds on immaterial things till we clearly understand that they are not dreams. No, indeed; it is everything else that is a dream or a shadow. (150)

Indeed; it is everything else that is a dream or a shadow.

So turn off the screen and gaze — and keep gazing — up at the heavens, where Christ is (Colossians 3:1–2). Despise the tantalizing trivialities, and keep your heart fixed on the next world — its glories, and foremost, its God. Wipe the crust of materialism from your eyes, wake from the sedative of worldliness, rise from slumber in this Enchanted Ground and look at Christ by faith until you see him more clearly than as trees walking. Spend your life exploring the mountains of glory summed up: “Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:18).

“Though you have not seen him,” Peter wrote to the early church, “you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls” (1 Peter 1:8–9).

Beloved, we travel to a world unseen, a place to make this all a dream.

A TV with no remotes. A theater with no exit. A dream with no waking. Such can the imagination seem in the midst of lustful temptation.

Many are familiar with the mumbled no, the shake of the head, the attempt to turn thoughts elsewhere. And perhaps just as many have felt the persistence of dark ideas, the return of images unwanted. We wandered into this theater of the imagination so easily, but now we can’t seem to find the way out.

How do we wake from this dream and break this imaginative spell? Many strategies may prove useful. Rehearse God’s promises, pray earnestly, sing a hymn. Or, less spiritual but still helpful, get outside, do push-ups, call a friend. Francis of Assisi once counseled a brother to throw himself into a freezing river, which he did. No doubt that would work.

Alongside these approaches, however, Scripture offers another. Instead of trying to shut down the imagination, engage it. Take this theater, which lust has so often wielded against you, and wield it now against lust.

Guard Your Mind

Perhaps no book teaches us how to wield the imagination against lust more than Proverbs does. Especially in the father’s words to his son in chapters 5–7, the book fills the theater of the mind with images designed to strip lust of its strength. Consider, for example, the father’s warning against the forbidden woman in Proverbs 7:25–27. He begins with a simple command:

Let not your heart turn aside to her ways;     do not stray into her paths.

Here is well-worn wisdom for resisting lust, wisdom we have likely heard many times before (and probably can’t hear too often). As with so many sins, the battle against lust is often won or lost at the start. Once the heart has turned aside, once the feet have strayed, we bring them back only with great difficulty. The road to the forbidden woman’s house runs downhill in every direction — and every road back is an upward climb. Far easier, then, to turn and flee at the head of her street than over the threshold of her home.

“As with so many sins, the battle against lust is often won or lost at the start.”

So far, so good. But how do we turn away at these crucial moments, as the wisp of a thought begins to form? Again, many strategies may prove useful. But here, the father bids his son to do something counterintuitive, even seemingly dangerous: imagine lust. Don’t simply look away, but look even more intently, beyond the temptation, to see what really lives behind the door of dark desire.

Theater of Faith

After commanding his son not to stray in verse 25, the father fights image with image:

For many a victim has she laid low,     and all her slain are a mighty throng.Her house is the way to Sheol,     going down to the chambers of death. (Proverbs 7:26–27)

The word for at the start tells us that what follows gives the reason, the great why, for stopping lust before the first step. And this why is not just a logical argument (though it is that too), but an image, a scene — a different story on imagination’s screen. Before, the son had seen the forbidden woman dressed scantily on the corner, her couch covered with linens, her bed perfumed — lust wearing makeup (Proverbs 7:12, 16–17). Now, he sees her black-robed and holding a sickle, her couch a sinkhole to hell, her bed an open coffin.

What is this father doing? Perhaps he remembers how, in the beginning, our first parents fell not merely by argument but by image: an image of a good tree, a wise self, and a withholding God (Genesis 3:4–6). Perhaps, closer to home, he remembers how the mighty David fell, in a moment, by a sight that remained on the surface, a figure that filled the mind (2 Samuel 11:2–3).

Either way, he knows the power of image, for both good and ill. He knows that, though imagination cannot substitute for faith, yet faith feeds on true images of God, self, and the world. Faithful imaginations remind faith what’s real — and what’s not.

Conceivably, the son in Proverbs 7 could have said no to the forbidden woman even if he failed to see the grave behind her door — just as Eve could have said no to the serpent even under the sway of his false images. The will may say no for the moment, even when the imagination is held captive. But long-term, those who say no on these conditions lose even if they win, for today’s corrupt imagination is tomorrow’s corrupt heart, corrupt will. Self-control cannot live long in a theater filled with lies. For as the imagination goes, so goes the man.

Come then, along with this father and son, and imagine.

Imagine Lust

There you are, sitting at your desk or lying in your bed, when a figure begins to call from the corner of your mind. An image flickers. A thought starts to take shape. But then you imagine: Who is this forbidden woman, this lady lust, this whisper in the dark?

Though her lips drip with honey and oil, she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a sword (Proverbs 5:3–4). The very opposite of medicine, she leads with pleasure and ends with pain; she pledges healing and slashes instead. Beyond her, you see her former “lovers”: retching, writhing, bleeding, dying.

She is a hidden snare, an invisible cord (Proverbs 5:22). Carried on by “just this once” and “just a little more,” her victims find their foot caught, their wrists wrapped. They promised themselves one visit to her home. Now they find they cannot leave.

She is a butcher and a hunter (Proverbs 7:22–23), the catcher of simple animals who see the meat and miss the hook. The man who follows her path walks as vulnerable as a stag seen from the other side of a bow. “He does not know that it will cost him his life” (Proverbs 7:23).

And then, as our passage puts it, she is death’s reaper, Sheol’s usher, mistress of the grave (Proverbs 7:26–27). With every stolen pleasure, she digs your grave deeper, carves another letter on your headstone, pounds another nail into your coffin.

Wormwood and sword, snare and cord, butcher and hunter, reaper and undertaker — here is the face of this seductive killer, the true face a wise father shows his son. Of course, a man may see lust as such and still fall into her arms. But he will have a harder time imagining himself lying down on a linen-covered couch: to get to her, he will have to climb into his grave.

Imagine Purity

God made the imagination for more than grim warnings, however. In temptation, faithful imaginations will not only look past the apparent beauty of lust; they also will look past the apparent homeliness of obedience. They will imagine purity.

The father sets the two imaginative tasks side by side:

Let your fountain be blessed,     and rejoice in the wife of your youth,     a lovely deer, a graceful doe.Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight;     be intoxicated always in her love.Why should you be intoxicated, my son, with a forbidden woman     and embrace the bosom of an adulteress? (Proverbs 5:18–20)

“Self-control cannot live long in a theater filled with lies. For as the imagination goes, so goes the man.”

The antidote to sinful intoxication is not mere sobriety, but righteous intoxication. Fight imagination with imagination — and for those who are married, begin with your spouse. Imagine the beauty of your marriage bed. Remember “the wife of your youth,” whose lips drip with honey that never sours, whose hands hide no sword, whose face gets lovelier the longer you look with faithful eyes. And do this “at all times” and “always.” Keep the theater of your mind filled with an intimacy guarded by vows.

That said, not all — and not most — who battle lust are married. And what’s more, Proverbs holds out a more powerful purity even for those who are married.

Imagine Him

Alongside “the wife of your youth,” the father counsels his son, again and again, to imagine another figure — better than a spouse, more pleasurable than married love: wisdom and, beyond her, the God she gives us.

The path of God-fearing wisdom, even the path of celibate God-fearing wisdom, is “more precious than jewels, and nothing you desire can compare with her” (Proverbs 3:15). She gives a smooth road, a fearless way, sweet sleep (Proverbs 3:23–24). Indeed, “her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace” (Proverbs 3:17). Whatever road of wisdom lies in front of you, however austere it may seem, you will find in the walking of it pleasantness and peace — pleasantness like Eden’s lawful fruit, peace like quiet streams in the land of the living.

Because all of wisdom’s paths lead us to the God who made them — more than that, the God who walked them himself, pure and happy and far better than anything forbidden. He is our glory and joy, our dignity and delight, the face meant to fill the theater of our mind. His fellowship is lust’s worst loss, purity’s greatest prize. He is Jesus.

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8). Imagine that. Imagine him.

Audio Transcript

Good Monday morning, everyone, and thank you for listening to the podcast. Well, is it sinful to fall short of excellence in our work? This is a great question, relevant for businessmen, for stay-at-home wives, for volunteers, for students — for all of us. And the question comes to us from a listener named Dylan.

Here’s what he asks: “Pastor John, hello to you, and thank you for taking my question! In Colossians 3:22–24, Paul exhorts his readers to ‘work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men.’ Does this mean that any work not done in excellence is sin? How do we apply God’s view of work to cleaning our house, writing a paper for school, or working a nine-to-five job? I have been feeling guilty about the way I handle these things for months now, and I’m not sure if I’m just being self-righteous, or if I am being disobedient to the Lord. Is Paul describing a type of excellence in all that we do?”

Let me begin with an illustration from my ministry from about thirty years ago. We were wrestling at the time in our church with how to think about expectations of excellence in music, in worship services. And there was one group that stressed technical excellence and quoted 2 Samuel 24:24: “I will not offer burnt offerings to the Lord my God that cost me nothing” — which, being applied in our situation, meant, “I will not offer God any music in our worship services that has not cost me an extraordinary effort of practice so as to make it technically excellent, even flawless.”

Then there was another group, or maybe I should say there was me. I appreciated that commitment to excellence; however, my gentle pushback to this emphasis was that, in the Christian church, God not only cares about whether we are excellent musicians, but also cares about whether we are excellent forgivers. That’s the way I stated it — whether we are excellent in patience, excellent in long-suffering. For example, whether we show patience and forgiveness if someone’s musical effort was not flawless.

“When it comes to excellence in the Christian life, we dare not ever limit it to the way a person does a skill.”

In other words, when it comes to excellence in the Christian life, we dare not ever limit it to the way a person does a skill or the way a person does a craft. We must always take into account excellence in attitudes, excellence in emotions, excellence in relationships. God has lots more to say in his word about whether we are angry in our attitude than he does about whether we’re competent in our skill.

Undistracting Excellence

The way we finally worked this out among our people, among our leaders, was to use this phrase as our goal: undistracting excellence. In other words, there is something bigger and deeper and more important going on in this service than the technical quality of music. It’s not unimportant; it’s just not most important. The aim here is to know God, meet God, love God, treasure God, trust God, enjoy God.

Those are all acts of the heart and mind. Everything else is subservient to that in this service, helping people get to that, including the excellence of our performances — whether it’s music or the sound system or lighting or heating or air conditioning or preaching or the clothing that we wear. Everything is to remove obstacles — undistracting — and to serve knowing God, meeting God, loving God, treasuring God, trusting God, enjoying God. We captured that goal by putting the adjective undistracting in front of the word excellence.

It implied that not only might shoddy work distract from meeting God — the person continuing to make mistakes. Everybody’s going to be embarrassed; they’re going to be distracted — that’s not going to work. But also, excessive finesse might distract from the spiritual reality of encountering God. And I’m thinking of this in preaching, not just music. A sermon can be so shoddy in its order and clarity that it doesn’t help. And it can be so rhetorically refined that it distracts and doesn’t help. So the criterion ceased to be an abstract view of technical excellence and became a spiritual goal of removing obstacles from people seeing and savoring Christ.

Working from the Soul

Now, Dylan is asking about Colossians 3:22–24 and how it calls us to excellence. So here’s the text:

Bondservants, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, not by way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord. Whatever you do, work heartily [it’s literally ek psyches, “from the soul”], as for of the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ.

I think Dylan is right to draw principles for all of us from these verses, even though they are directed to slaves and masters. And I say that because Colossians 3:17, just above this paragraph, says, “Whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus.” And I think Paul is simply applying that global principle for all of us to the slave-master relationship so that all of us can learn from his application. I would point to three things that he says.

Avoid Hypocrisy

First, don’t just try to be outwardly pleasing to people while your heart doesn’t care about the people and doesn’t care really about what quality of work you do, as long as they think it’s good. It’s “eye-service”; that’s man-pleasing. In other words, don’t be a hypocrite.

If you’re going to give the impression outwardly to your boss, or your teacher, or your spouse, or your friend that you are doing something to please them, then do something really to please them. Don’t be a hypocrite. Don’t be a double-tongued or a double-behavior person who outwardly wants to have a sense of being pleased with their eyes, and deep down you haven’t done good work at all, and you’re concealing it from them. That would significantly affect the quality of work you do if you had that mindset. And Paul says, “Don’t have it.”

Work for Jesus

Second, whatever job you have and whomever it is that you are working for as a Christian, always think of Jesus Christ as the one to whom you will give an account for the quality of your work and the quality of your attitudes in the work. Colossians 3:24 says, “You are serving the Lord Christ” — meaning, whomever else you’re serving, you are really serving Christ in serving them. So, whatever quality of attitude and quality of work you would do if Christ were your immediate supervisor, do that work with that attitude.

Look to the Reward

And third, Paul says, “Keep in mind that your reward for the good you do will come from the Lord, even if it doesn’t come from man.”

“Always think of Jesus Christ as the one to whom you will give an account for the quality of your work.”

So clearly, Paul is implying, (1) knowing that we shouldn’t be hypocrites or deceitful men-pleasers, and (2) knowing that ultimately our supervisor for this homework or housework or job work is the Lord Jesus himself, and (3) knowing that our reward comes from him, not primarily from the teachers or spouses or bosses — all of that will exert an influence on the quality of work we do, and the good attitudes with which we do it.

More at Stake Than Excellence

And then Dylan asks, “Does this mean that any work not done in excellence is sin?” And if that question is to be answered with precision, I would say the answer is no, not always. It’s not always sin. It’s not that simple.

For example, if you decide to paint your own bedroom rather than hire a professional painter, because you think God wants you to give the several-hundred dollars you might pay the painter to some missionary friend, and yet you are not a very skilled painter, how will God look upon the exactness of the line between the beige wall and the white ceiling where they meet each other up in the corner?

I’m speaking from experience here. A skilled painter gets a little bead (I’ve seen him do this) of paint on the end of his brush, and he drags it — this perfect little bead — along that line with such amazing precision that the line between the edge, between the beige wall and the white ceiling, is perfect. Now my lines between the beige wall and the white ceiling are wavy. Here’s my answer: God will not view my wavy edges as sin. He won’t, even though they are not technically excellent, like a painter could make them. Bigger things are at stake, in other words.

But if I advertise myself as a painter, with my present skill, and I go into somebody else’s bedroom, and I paint their wall with wavy edges of beige on the wall and white on the ceiling with a wavy line in between, hoping they won’t see it and how shoddy it is compared to what a
real painter could do, that will be sin.

Do Your Best

The same thing applies to so many situations. It’s not sin to make a B in algebra class instead of an A if you work hard and do your best. It’s not sin to make five sales this week instead of ten if you’re doing your best.

And I would define “your best” like this: “your best” is defined as a fallible effort to take into account all relevant factors, like sleep (when you sleep) and health and family and my age and energy and gifting and other relationships that need to be attended to. And then, when all is said and done, you entrust yourself to the grace of Christ, who died for you so that you could enjoy his excellent forgiveness.