"Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up." - James 4:10
The story is told of a rich man who lay stricken with illness and certain of approaching death. Although he had never before had any regard for spiritual matters in his life, when the specter of death loomed large before him he began to fear for the destiny of his soul, and summoned one of his slaves, a man whom he knew to be a devout Christian.
"I am dying and afraid that I will be lost," the rich man explained when the slave came to his room. "Please tell me what I need to do to be saved."
The slave thought for a moment and replied, "Sir, you will need to get up and go down and kneel in the pig pen, confess your sins to God, and ask His pardon."
"You can't mean that," the rich man said. "Please don't joke with me. I'm dying and I fear being lost for eternity. Tell me what I must do!"
But once again the slave replied, "I've told you, sir. You need to go down to the pig pen."
Angry and incredulous, the rich man sent the slave away that afternoon. But it wasn't long before his thoughts again turned to his eternal destiny. Sleep fled from him. Visions of damnation paraded before his mind's eye. Again he sent for the slave, only to receive the same reply: "If you want to be saved, sir, you'll need to go kneel down in the pig pen, confess your sins to God, and ask His pardon." The rich man pleaded and threatened, but the servant remained inflexible, and again the rich man sent the slave away.
Finally, when the rich man felt his strength ebbing and his anguish threatened to to overwhelm him, he summoned his slave and relented in tears. "You win," he told the slave, "help me up. If I have to go kneel down in the pig pen to be saved, I'll do it. I'll do it."
But as the rich man struggled to rise from his sick bed, the slave placed a hand on his shoulder and smiled down at him. "You don't really have to go down to the pig pen, sir. You just have to be willing to."
I first heard this story as a child, and have often reflected on it in the years since. I find it an apt illustration of why so few in our society are ready to do business with God. Oh, there is no shortage of people who dream of Heaven, and it's clear that most of them expect to make it there by virtue of some good they've done or some evil they've avoided. In the American mindset, God is always ready to play "Let's Make a Deal" with all but the very worst of us, for no other apparent reason than He is the ultimate nice guy. Our society is full of people who think this way.
Hell is full of people who thought that way.
The truth of the matter is that God is terrifyingly holy. His justice is real. His wrath is not just something we read about in quaint Old Testament stories; it is a real thing, and for those outside of His grace, an inevitable thing (Revelation 20:11-15). When He says, "The soul that sins, it shall die," (Ezekiel 18:20) you can be sure that He means it. Play games with the Almighty, my friend, and you will lose - certainly and eternally (Matthew 25:46). Yes, God is full of mercy, patience and compassion (Psalm 86:15) - a thousand times, yes! In fact, the Bible tells us that His compassions do not fail, that they are "new every morning" (Lamentations 3:22-23), and for this we praise Him. But it is equally true that He will not put up with anyone who tries to make a mockery of Him (Galatians 6:7), and one way in which we mock Him most often is by coming to Him with a heart full of pride. I've actually heard people say that when they stand before God, they'll "tell Him how it is."
Really? Scripture makes it clear that no one who gets a glimpse of God can stand before Him in arrogance:
- Exodus chapters 19-20 recount how God descended upon Mount Sinai "in fire," and with the sound of trumpet blast, causing the mountain to shake. This so frightened the Hebrews that they backed away from the mountain and begged Moses to go up and talk to God for them, "but let not God speak with us, lest we die." (20:19).
- In Isaiah 6:1-5, the prophet Isaiah tells us of the following vision he had of God:
"In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple. Above it stood seraphim; each one had six wings: with two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one cried to another and said: 'Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; The whole earth is full of His glory!' And the posts of the door were shaken by the voice of him who cried out, and the house was filled with smoke. So I said: 'Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; For my eyes have seen the King, The LORD of hosts.'"
- In Revelation, chapter 1, the apostle John records a vision of the glorified Jesus Christ, remarking that, "when I saw Him, I fell at His feet as dead."
- In Revelation 6:14-17, at the breaking of the sixth seal, John records the following:
"Then the sky receded as a scroll when it is rolled up, and every mountain and island was moved out of its place. And the kings of the earth, the great men, the rich men, the commanders, the mighty men, every slave and every free man, hid themselves in the caves and in the rocks of the mountains, and said to the mountains and rocks, 'Fall on us and hide us from the face of Him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! For the great day of His wrath has come, and who is able to stand?'"
These are but a few glimpses of the One whom some flippantly call "the Old Man Upstairs," the One whose name they defile as a curse word, the One before whom they think they'll strut and smart-off, the same One before whose face the Bible says, "the earth and the heaven fled away. And there was found no place for them." (Revelation 20:11)
Friends, as the slave in the story of the dying rich man understood, if we are to come to God, we must do so in utmost humility. We must recognize our sinfulness and unworthiness, and cast ourselves upon His mercy. Until we're ready to kneel in the pig pen before Him, as it were, we are not ready to know Him and receive anything from Him. Indeed, in God's sight, we're already in the pig pen and covered with its grime. In Isaiah 64:6, the Bible tells us that: "We are all like an unclean thing, And all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags; We all fade as a leaf, And our iniquities, like the wind, Have taken us away."
The Word of God is clear: everything we consider best about ourselves, all of which we would brag about before God, is, in His sight, filth; and until we see this, we are in no position to receive His mercy.
We live in what is perhaps one of the most arrogant generations in human history. As a civilization, we have come to trust in our technology, our self-perceived cleverness and sophistication. We think of ourselves as something special, perhaps as the Christians in the ancient city of Laodicea once saw themselves. And yet, what did God think of them?
Revelation 3:17 - "You say, 'I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing'—and do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked—"
In spite of this, however, the Lord stands ready to forgive. He tells us how we appear in His sight and how we compare with Him, not to trample us under His feet but to bring us to the place where He can wash us and raise us up:
Revelation 3:18-21 - "I counsel you to buy from Me gold refined in the fire, that you may be rich; and white garments, that you may be clothed, that the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed; and anoint your eyes with eye salve, that you may see. As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. Therefore be zealous and repent. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me. To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne."
James 4:8-10 - "Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Lament and mourn and weep! Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up."
Psalm 34:18 - "The LORD is near to those who have a broken heart, And saves such as have a contrite spirit."
Psalm 51:17 - "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, A broken and a contrite heart— These, O God, You will not despise."
Proverbs 3:34 - "Surely He scorns the scornful, But gives grace to the humble."
And so the question I would ask is this: have you ever been to the pig pen? Do you expect God to receive you because of who you are? Because of something you've done of which you're especially proud? Because others view you as such a good person? Because of social status? Because you haven't "done anything all that bad"? Because you deserve Heaven somehow?
If so, you are on dangerous ground, my friend. God is no respecter of persons. He stands ready, even eager, to save you; but before He can do so you must first admit your sinfulness before Him and your inability to save yourself. Accept the blood of Jesus Christ that was shed on your behalf as the only means by which you can be declared "not-guilty" before God:
II Corinthians 5:21 - "He made the One who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him."
But the pig pen is not only for those who have never come to the Savior, as even those of us who know Him can sometimes be found strutting vainly through life like the Laodicean believers, confident in our own self-sufficiency, forgetting the lowly state in which He found us - mired in sin, condemned to eternal punishment, without hope but for the mercy extended to us by the grace of the Lord Jesus, and helpless to please Him even now without His power working through us (John 15:5). May we pray that God will examine our hearts and, if there is such pride there, that He will make it evident to us and cause us to repent, that we might be rich in His sight and clothed in the white garments that only He can give.
