Good News For Addicts

You can get free from drug and alcohol addiction, any addiction. And I say this not because I'm a strong person and because I figured it out. I say it because I was the man that was plunged headlong into drug and alcohol addiction.

My drugs of choice, ecstasy especially, cocaine, pain pills, alcohol, marijuana. If it was there, I was using it. And here I'm standing actually right now in the very place that I would come to even party for days.

Not hours, not a little bit on the side, but I would come to disappear for days and I would use the entire time. I was up for days. Ecstasy, cocaine, alcohol. I remember walking down the strip many years ago after partying for about two days.

And I was so high on ecstasy that I couldn't go to sleep. And so I remember going to a bar in one of the casinos and putting down a bucket, an ice bucket, and asking the guy to fill it up with Long Island iced teas.

He was like, that's a lot of Long Island iced teas. And I was like, that's fine. And so I paid him for it. He filled it up. And I walked outside with the sun coming up in Las Vegas, drinking this bucket of Long Island iced tea after partying on drugs for days.

And the freedom that I got out of drug and alcohol addiction wasn't from personal strength. I didn't just simply figure it out. God met me where I was in my sin, in my brokenness, in my depravity. That's where he met me.

I wasn't good. I wasn't righteous. I didn't figure it out. I didn't polish myself up and make myself better. God crushed my life, and he showed me who I was. My problem wasn't drugs and alcohol. My problem wasn't ecstasy and cocaine and pain pills.

My problem was idolatry. We were created in the image of God to know God, to worship God, to enjoy him forever. And because we are rebels against the king, we choose bootleg pleasure and bootleg joy over God, who says that in his presence, his fullness of joy, in his right hand, there are pleasures forever.

We don't want intimacy with him, the one who made us. We would rather choose some substandard intimacy, some false intimacy. We'd rather love the lie, the lie that God's not there, the lie that we can find true wholeness, satisfaction, real worship in something else rather than God.

So the problem isn't merely physical. There are physical consequences to drug and alcohol addiction. You may need physical detox. You may need that. Many people do. But that's not going to save you, and it's not ultimately going to heal you from your addiction.

You see, the problem, what's really broken is not merely physical. You're not just a bag of tissue. You're not just a bag of protoplasm moving throughout the universe. You're in the image of God. There's more to you than simply this.

And there's something deeper that's actually broken. It's our relationship with God. That's what's broken. We are rebels against God. We are fallen. And so we suppress the truth of God. We don't want him.

We say no to him. So we exchange him, the only God, the beautiful God, the amazing and glorious God, the perfect God, the God of righteousness and justice, and we choose some bootleg pleasure, some bootleg joy, something that lasts four or five hours.

And it isn't even real. It's all fake. It's a lie. And we accept and love the lie rather than the truth. And the truth is is that we need peace with God. Because we're rebels against God, because we don't have peace with God, because we are fallen and sinners and we deserve judgment and punishment, we'd rather run the other direction, away to the ecstasy for the false pleasure.

We'd rather run to the bottle to wash away all of the guilt and the shame. We'd rather run to the marijuana to check out completely, to forget who we are, to forget where we are, to forget who he actually is.

That's the truth, is that we are fallen. We are not righteous. We are not good. We don't have any fear for God, and so we run off to the false pleasure. We run off to worship elsewhere. Now, here's the freedom.

The freedom isn't going to come from your own strength. You know that. I know where you're at. If you're struggling right now watching this, I know where you're at. You're thinking that you are a slave to this, and that is true.

Jesus says, whoever commits sin is a slave of sin. You are a slave. But the freedom isn't merely going to be going to rehab to get detoxed. Again, you may need to be detoxed for your own safety. But I can tell you, as a chaplain full-time at a drug and alcohol rehab hospital for four years, I saw hundreds and hundreds of people come through and get detoxed and then die the next day.

Dead. I've done funerals for dead kids. They were just in front of me, and they were detoxed, and then they went back to the idol to worship falsely elsewhere. That's not the only thing. That's not what drives the addiction.

What drives the addiction is the false worship. It's idolatry. It's falling down at the throne of another god, a false god that has never saved you. He has never told you the truth because it's not a real god anyways.

The glory of God's good news, His gospel, is that He loves the wreck, you and me. He loves the rebel. He loves the hostile one, the sinner, the one who would rather have something else, some bootleg pleasure and joy, rather than Him.

And He loves them anyways in their sin. And this God, the only God, took on flesh, became a man. To do what? To live the life that you and I have absolutely failed. He wasn't a rebel. He wasn't a sinner.

He wasn't unholy. He wasn't a slave like you and me. He was righteous and blameless and holy, and He took the death penalty that you and I deserve in the place of His people. He took what we should get for our life of rebellion against Him.

And then He conquered that death and He rose again from the dead. He has ascended on His throne and seated. And this is the call. The call is to turn away from your idolatry, your sin, your rebellion, your whole life of rebellion, to turn away from your righteousnesses that aren't even real.

They're merely filthy rags before His throne because it's already too late. We're already rebels. Turn away from all your attempts to fix yourself up so that He'll accept you one day. There is no ability to fix ourselves up and do enough good deeds to satisfy His righteous standards.

The glory of the Gospel is that this comes as a gift by His grace through faith in Jesus and what He's accomplished. The call of the Gospel is to repent, to have a change of mind. You're going towards your sin, your idolatry, your unrighteousness, your rebellion, and the call is to have a change of mind, to turn to Christ, and to place your faith and trust in total toward Him.

The call is this, come die. Not literally die like you're going towards now, but to come and die, be joined to Him in His death and resurrection. Yes, there's a cost to this. Count the cost in terms of not what do I need to pay God, but there's a cost in what you lose.

You lose yourself. You lose all of your lying and your idolatry. You lose your sin and your clinging to your unrighteousness. You can lose everything in coming to this Savior, but you didn't have anything anyways.

It was all a lie, and you know it's a lie. So the call of the Gospel is to repent and to believe. Be reconciled to God through faith in Jesus. He says, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father but by me.

The call of the Gospel is to repent and to believe. Come and trust in Jesus and what He accomplished for salvation and for forgiveness. Be reconciled to God. Have peace with God. Turn from this false worship and come to worship the true God as a child.

Reconciled and redeemed by His grace through faith in Jesus. That's the call of the Gospel. That's the freedom you need. Freedom from this slavery to this sin and idolatry. And a relationship of peace with God is what you get.

And it's not of your doing. It's all God. Here's the promise. You're probably wondering like me, how? How is this possible? How am I going to get free from all this slavery, all these chains? And the answer isn't what Jesus says.

If the Son sets you free, you shall be free indeed. The answer is what God promises to those who have been redeemed and reconciled. I'll put my spirit within them and I'll cause them to observe my statutes.

Your freedom is not coming from you. It's coming from Him. Turn to Christ and live.