The Road to Hell…
August 29, 2004
Romans 10:1-4

If there was ever a story that entered into the Company lore of Hamann Construction, I suppose it would be the story of a laborer named Mark who got a work order one day to demolish a restroom up in Poway.

It seemed like a simple enough job – on a good day, demolition is kind of fun. There is something cathartic about going after drywall with sledgehammer… and your progress is easy to measure. Mark was supposed to clear out that restroom to make room for new offices that were going to be built inside that same building. It’s a happy job!

So he collected the key to the building from his boss and drove up to the Poway industrial center there on the hills above the City. The morning was still cool when he arrived and he was happy to discover that someone had left the building open so he didn’t even have to use his key to get in.

He set to work with a good will and by 2:00 in the afternoon he was almost done with the job. In fact, the restroom lay in ruins at his feet and he was just beginning the clean-up when the owner of the building happened to walk in– and throw up his hands in horror.

It seems that in his haste to get started, Mark hadn’t looked very closely at the address on his work order – which read 2550 Brookprinter, not 2530 Brookprinter place, the building that he had actually entered. He had demolished the wrong restroom.

In fact, in about six hours, he had done about four thousand dollars damage to the wrong person’s place. He never lived it down! Now, let me tell you something. Mark was a hard worker. He had a good attitude. He had gone about his labors that morning with an admirable zeal. He had worked steadily all day long. He was full of Good Intentions… but none of these good things could make up for the one basic problem -- he was demolishing the wrong restroom.

No matter how hard he worked, no matter how great his attitude; no matter even how good his intentions were, Mark was still wrong! He was still lacking in the truth! He may have thought that he knew what needed to be done, but he was mistaken – and the result was damages.

They say that the road to Hell is paved with GOOD INTENTIONS – and normally I suppose what they are referring to are people who forever put off the good things they intend to do.

These people always intend to go to Church; they intend to have a relationship with God; they intend to be faithful in marriage and dependable at work and careful with their health, and a good example to their children – but somehow in the midst of real life these good intentions get left behind.

They become nothing more than unrealized dreams for an unlikely future and we call them ‘sins of omission.’ James describes the problem well in James 4:17 when he says, “Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it, sins.” NIV

But there is another set of Good Intentions that is even MORE effective as pavement on the road to Hell… these are stated philosophies or religions or cults that on their surface seem to be good – full of good intentions.

Their adherents are hard-working and zealous, often seemingly filled with a sense of mission and righteous fervor – but in reality rather than building the kingdom of God in this world, they are busy tearing down the wrong restroom; they are busy enforcing their own will upon the unwilling; they are busy bringing about their own brand of ‘good’ in this world in an invariably evil way.

And the sins these people commit are often far more dangerous than any simple sin of omission. Self-righteous Zeal is always more dangerous than apathy… when people take up a cause and become convinced that the ends justify the means then the means get meaner and meaner!

A few weeks back, a friend of mine here at church shared a letter with me that she had received from a friend in the Los Angeles area. This friend was sharing her excitement about some seminars she had recently attended in LA at the Church of Scientology.

And my friend to her credit was trying to warn her away. In spite of what its name might imply, Scientology is much more like science fiction than science… and the horror stories that have been told by people who have been caught up in it are often frightening.

But I found this girl’s response to my friend’s warning to be fascinating. She said, “How could anything that talks about honesty and integrity and love be bad? How could something that helps me to be a better person be wrong?”

Well, the simple answer is this, “The Road to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions.” In fact, the very worst sins ever perpetrated against humanity have always been inspired by ‘good intentions,” motivated by ‘good’ goals and executed with religious zeal.

In fact, the word “ZEAL” in the New Testament is an interesting word. It’s the word zelos –obviously the root of our English word; but UNLIKE Zeal in English, the word zelos in Greek can be either positive or negative.

It comes from another Greek root zeos, which actually means ‘heat.’ You might say it is the opposite of the lukewarm of Rev 3:15-16 – This is Jesus’ letter to the church in Laodicea when he wrote,

In many places in the New Testament the word zelos is translated “zeal,” and used in the positive sense. But in other places, the word is translated “envy” or “jealousy” or even “indignation,” and these are not positive words at all! That’s because zelos signifies “heat” or “heatedness” and the truth is that both the best and the worst things in life can be attributed to Zeal!

Paul demonstrates the power of this word for both Good and Evil in our scripture for this morning found in Rom 10:1-4. Let’s open our Bibles. As you turn there, let us again put the scripture in context. Way back at the beginning of Romans 9, Paul had asked the difficult question: “If the Jews are God’s Chosen People and Jesus is the Messiah, then why don’t all Jews accept Jesus as their savior and become Christians?”

And ever since that point in his letter, he has been answering that question. He has pointed out that contrary to the popular belief of the religious elite, salvation is not genetic. No one could ever be declared righteous or worthy of fellowship with God on the basis of ancestry.

He has shown his readers how all of history had been designed by God to ‘make the riches of his glory known to his vessels of mercy.’ He has pointed out that even the Old Testament prophets knew that God would call a people to himself from all over the world – not just from among the Jews.

And he has revealed that the greatest barrier to faith that was being experienced by the Jewish people was not a lack of evidence; it was not even a lack of desire to the right thing; but instead it was pure and simple Legalism.

For them, the Law of Moses was enough. They, in fact, had devoted their lives to those laws and they were convinced that real righteousness was within their reach – just a few commandments, just a few more rules, just a few more regulations away. But the problem is that in this environment, Jesus becomes unnecessary or at least redundant. He became a ‘stumbling block’ not a savior. In their minds, they were already righteous and needed no reminder of their sins!

Paul continues with this thought in Romans chapter 10:1-4:

Now, this morning I want to discuss THREE ASPECTS of ZEAL as revealed by the Apostle Paul in these first four verses of Romans 10. The first is what you might call “The Problem of MISPLACED ZEAL” as set forth in verse 2.

Paul says, “These people are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based upon knowledge.” These are people with Good Intentions! They are committed to the temple and to the sacrifices; they are fastidious in their obedience to the rules and regulations of the Law! But the truth is that their ZEAL is misplaced. It is not based upon knowledge; but upon their own conception of reality..

They may be very busy and hardworking and well-intentioned, but the truth is that they are still tearing down the wrong restroom! And we see this problem, the problem of misplaced zeal cropping up again and again throughout history.

There is this widely spoken idea in liberal circles today that it really doesn’t matter what you believe as long as you are sincere about it. And it sounds good, but in reality it’s nonsense. Contrary to popular opinion, TRUTH is important and lies are invariably fatal.

What you believe DOES matter. It has mattered again and again down through History. The trouble with Zeal is that when it’s misplaced, it can be catastrophic. In fact, I have thought of at least four different areas of life where Zeal without knowledge has been extremely harmful.

Zeal without Knowledge is certainly manifesting itself SOCIALLY in America today. Most of the pathologies that are having such a negative effect upon our society today can be traced to misplaced zeal.

Take the example of my friend John (I’ve changed the details of his life a bit to protect the innocent), but suffice it to say that John was full of zeal and Good Intentions. His stated desire was to build the biggest and the best plumbing company in all of San Diego… and he devoted his life to the cause.

He told me one time that he never went home at night if there was anything left on his desk to do. When he said that to me I said to myself, “Gees, I could never go home!” And the truth is that John rarely did!

He regularly worked fourteen and sixteen hour days. He labored away nights and weekends. He used to brag to me that he hadn’t had a vacation in twenty years (as if that were a good thing.

And it IS a good thing to provide for your family, isn’t it? That’s what he wanted to do, But in his zeal to ‘provide for his family,’ he lost them. His wife of eighteen years suddenly asked for a divorce… she said she hardly ever saw him anyway. Then about ten years ago, he had a wake-up call. His son attempted suicide. And he realized that he couldn’t really be there for him because he hardly even knew him.

John’s Zeal for hard work had taken over his life. His good intentions – to provide for his family --- actually took them away from him. It would have been far better for him and his family, if he had spent a little less time at the office and made a little less money and a little more love.

It’s possible that in Romans 10:2, Paul was quoting from Prov 19:2-3 where it says,

So often people like John ruin their lives with misplaced zeal and then rage against the LORD when their families fall apart. It is far better to seek wisdom with knowledge. It is far better to arrange our priorities from the very beginning around family and faith in a way that will glorify God and not us! It’s far better to work on the right restroom!

But as serious as the Social implications of Misplaced Zeal can be in society, they are minor in comparison to the damage that can be wreaked by the problem of Misplaced Zeal in the POLITICAL REALM. The great political movements of the 20th Century were rife with Good Intentions and powered by the zeal of millions, and more people died at their hands in one century than had lived in all of the centuries preceding.

Take Germany in the 1930’s, for example. As a result of World War I and the Treaty of Versailles, Germany had been saddled with an enormous national debt - for war reparations. The Weimar Republic – the government that had been established after the War – was weak.

The Great Depression had descended upon the whole world – but it struck with a vengeance in Germany. Unemployment had soared to more than 50%. Inflation was measured in the thousands of percent.

German friends of mine whose parents lived through this time told me of taking wheelbarrows full of cash to the grocery store in order to buy food. They said that whenever any cash passed through their hands, they hastily purchased hard goods like pianos or used cars or anything because they knew with certainty that their money would be worth less tomorrow and even less the day after that. It truly was a terrible time.

But into this difficult situation walked a zealous and charismatic man. His name was Adolf Hitler. And his intentions were good. He wanted to bring jobs to the unemployed. He wanted to check inflation. He wanted to restore pride to the fatherland. And he set out to do all of those things with a kind of zeal that bordered upon fanaticism… and for a while he succeeded.

If you have ever watched old newsreels of Hitler from the 1930’s, then you will know that the National Socialist (or Nazi) Movement in Germany lacked nothing in the area of heat. Hitler’s speaking style was a cross between ‘rabid dog’ and mad man. He ranted and raged and stormed and screamed. He flailed at the air like a shadow boxer. The people in the front row were likely to be showered with his spit.

Now, this style of speaking doesn’t inspire me – but somehow it did inspire the people of Germany. As the camera pans out into the crowd in these newsreels, you can see tens of thousands of people in the audience caught in the ecstasy of the mob. They are stamping their feet and lifting their right hands straight toward heaven and screaming out at the top of their lungs “Heil Hitler!”

And this was a zeal that took the German people out of the rallies and onto the streets of Germany. Through a combination of fear and intimidation, zeal and persuasion, ideas and results, the Nazis swept across Germany with a kind of religious fervor that soon spun out of control. Millions died as a result of their good intentions, caught in the clutches of zeal without knowledge.

How could someone who talked about such good things – about patriotism and prosperity and pride – how could such a person be bad? How could such Good Intentions lead to such a hell on earth? Because one critical component was left out of the equation - the wisdom of God!

Misplaced Zeal causes problems in the Social Realm in the Political Realm and next and perhaps most prominently in recent years also in the RELIGIOUS REALM. Today, another charismatic leader has entered the world stage.

And he is a man with ‘good’ intentions. His stated desire is to rid the world of evil. He has taken what many might consider a much needed stance against rampant decadence in the Western World. He is opposed to pornography and prostitution and the exploitation of women. That’s a good thing! He speaks out against the evils of alcoholism and adultery and materialism. That’s a good thing! His desire is to keep the Holy Places of his religion Holy and to create a Utopian Society over the all the earth.

He is committed to prayer and fasting and giving to the poor. His personal purity is so important to him that he has been known to cover his ears at the horse races in order to prevent himself from hearing the music of the bugles at the beginning of the race – because after all, music is ‘haram,’ forbidden!

The person I am talking about is, of course, Osama bin Laden – and do not underestimate the effects of his zeal on this world even today after nearly three years of living in hiding. Fueled by economic hardship and the oil money of the West, Osama bin Laden’s fundamentalist version of Islam is spreading like wildfire across Africa and Asia.

It was his zeal that inspired the seventeen hijackers of 9/11 to board American Airliners and systematically fly them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, killing thousands in the process.

Fundamentalist Islam’s unique combination of religious fervor and the conviction of being in the RIGHT has justified all kinds of acts of violence in the minds of its adherents. Thousands of innocent people – including Africans and Asians and Australians and Muslims – have been sacrificed on the altar of this zeal without knowledge.

And again the question must be asked: How could a person so committed to purity and prayer and giving to the poor be bad? How can such good intentions, lead to such crimes against humanity? Well again: one component has been left out of this equation. It is the true wisdom and knowledge of God!

Now, I wish that I could stop here with the Social and Political and Religious Implications of Misplaced Zeal… but I’m afraid that for our list to be complete, it is necessary to go one step further. You see, misplaced Zeal has also at times invaded the Church.

Take the example of James Kopp. He was a man of intensity and idealism and… Good Intentions. He prayed every day. He went to church on Sunday and he had a particular concern for the unborn.

His stated desire and life’s work really was to preserve the lives of the millions of unborn children in America whose lives are terminated by abortion each year. He went at this work with an enviable enthusiasm. His weekends were dedicated to painting posters and picketing abortion Clinics. He helped stage sit-ins and organize letter-writing campaigns.

Then in early 1998, in a burst of Holy Zeal, he purchased a high-powered rifle and began visiting shooting ranges to polish his aim. Over the next few month, he began stalking abortion providers in the Northeast. That’s how he found himself in the woods outside of Dr. Barnett Slepian’s home on October 23, 1998.

It was a scene of domestic tranquility. Dr. Slepian was in the kitchen cooking dinner with his wife as James Kopp took aim through the window. The Doctor’s four children were in the house in their bedrooms when he fired. They all heard the shot. They rushed into the kitchen and found their father lying in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor. Five minutes later, he was dead with a bullet through the heart.

In that moment, an allegedly “Christian” man with a supposedly unshakeable commitment to Life became a murderer! And the implications of what he did to sully the reputation of Jesus in the world today are still not fully realized! This one man has given the secular world an excuse to lump Christianity with Islam and to equate Christian fundamentalism with murder – when in reality nothing could be further from the truth!

How could a person so committed to the lives of the unborn be evil? How could such good intentions, lead to such a crime? Well, because one critical component had been left out of this man’s life path as well – it was the wisdom of God! James Kopp’s Zeal was Zeal without Knowledge. He brought death and not life to this world!

And the interesting thing is that in every case -- in the case of Adolf Hitler, in the case of Osama bin Laden and in the case of James Kopp a well the origin of this Misplaced Zeal is the same. Without fail it comes from too LOW a view of God and too HIGH a view of ourselves! The misplaced Zeal that has inspired tyrants and motivated murderers again and again throughout history has always come from too LOW a view of God and too HIGH a view of ourselves!

Look again at Rom 10:3. Paul says, “Since they did not know the righteousness that comes from God and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God's righteousness.” NIV

These folks, says Paul, won’t submit to God’s righteousness, they are too good for that. Instead their desire is to establish their own righteousness on this earth. This is too Low a view of God.

This is zeal like the zeal of the Pharisees in the New Testament who counted out the dill and poppy seeds in order to tithe the correct tenth to God. This is zeal like the Zeal of Osama bin Laden who can’t listen to music at the horse races – it assumes that we can somehow earn our place in heaven by mostly following the right rules; by mostly doing the right thing. This is too Low a view of God!

Everyone knows instinctively that they are not perfect (even if they won’t admit it). In fact, often when we are caught in a sin, the tendency is NOT for us to say, “I’m sorry. I was wrong,” but instead, “Gee, I’m only human!” – as if somehow being ‘only human’ was a good excuse or at least was good enough for God.

But believe me, this is far too low a view of the righteousness of God. God doesn’t grade on a curve. He never winks at evil. He doesn’t sit in up heaven and smile indulgently at our sins saying to himself, “Ah well, boys will be boys!”

The truth is that God is perfectly righteous and any sin at all in our lives makes us automatically incapable of fellowship with him outside of the blood of Christ– as Paul puts it in 2 Cor 6:14, “What fellowship can light have with darkness?” It can’t!

People love to imagine that somehow at the end of their lives God is going to pile up all of their good deeds on one side of some heavenly scale and all of their sins on the other side and then see how things tilt. And practically everyone on earth is certain that THEIR scale will tip toward the good side. But this is a serious underestimation of the righteousness of God!

The standard is set for us in Matt 5:48. There, Jesus says, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Did you get that standard? He doesn’t say “be human.” He says “Be perfect” and none of us can qualify. And you know in the light of the righteousness of God this standard makes perfect sense.

Do you think that God would really be happy with a simple majority, a fifty-one percent good person? If so, what exactly is the forty-nine percent composed of? Do you really think that a heaven filled with mostly good people would be worthy of the name?

And how do you do the accounting anyway? How much money in offerings do you have to give to get away with adultery, for example? Or how many candles do you have to burn to get away with murder? There is fallacy in this reasoning.

The truth is that no matter the amount of giving to the poor, no matter how many wings you build onto the hospital, no matter how often you go to church or how many five-dollar bills you drop in the plate, you can’t earn a place in the unapproachable light of the glory of God. Our acts of righteousness are tiny drops in the bucket of God’s glory. They are grains of sand set against the sea of our sins.

The hijackers of 9/11 are a great example of the bankruptcy of this idea. Several of them spent one of their last evenings alive at a strip joint in Ft. Lauderdale Florida. At first, that detail floored me since you would really expect these people to be religious fanatics deeply committed to the moral code of Islam.

But in thier low view of God, what they were about to do was the ultimate spiritual trump card. By flying those airplanes into the World Trade Center, by becoming ‘martyrs’ for Allah they were in their minds earning their right to heaven. It didn’t matter what else they might have done in life, God would have to forgive them because of this one great act at the end of their lives! What nonsense!

You see, this low view of the righteousness of God tends to actually INSPIRE evil acts rather than prevent them. How sad! But there is more. Misplaced Zeal also originates in too High a View of Ourselves.

This was the problem with Hitler’s Germany. Fascism taught that humanity could advance evolution on earth through selective breeding; that we could create a super race by weeding out inferior genetic material and promoting the good. In a truly evolutionary world, it would be a great idea. But it’s not a great idea because there IS No such thing as a super race and there is no way to create perfection in humanity through breeding or anything else.

Too high a view of ourselves was also the problem with the Soviet Union. Communism taught that humanity could create Utopia on earth by structuring society in such a way that everyone worked according to their ability and received according to their need. It sounds good. If people were perfectible it might have worked. But we are not. No amount of re-education and high-sounding dogma and police enforcement can make us unselfish and pliable in the hands of the state.

The truth is that rather than creating heaven on earth, both of these misguided political systems instead created the great machines of totalitarian terror that were required to enforce the official idea of morality down the throats of its citizens against their will.

And these problems are echoed in ANY scheme designed around slavish obedience to a system of rules. Think about it! Do you really think heaven will be a place of rules and regulations? Do you think that there will be a sign on the pearly gates that says, “No spitting.” Or “Please put your trash in the receptacles.” Or “Wash your hands before returning to the Tree of Life?” No way!

Do you think that on Orientation day in heaven they will pass out a list of guidelines like they do for Christian College Dorms, “No posters advertising alcohol or displaying scantily clad men or women will be allowed on your mansion walls.” Of course not! Those things will not be necessary. Those desires will be Gone. Heaven will be heaven because we’ll all be there in “… the glorious freedom of the children of God.” NIV

Heaven will be liberating not repressive. Rules cannot create heaven on earth – it is only the true righteousness of God that has the power to change hearts and minds and societies and cultures. It is only as we understand the truth of what He has done for us that we can begin to appreciate his presence in our lives.

Now, some of you might be saying, “Gregg, this whole morning you have been talking about Zeal as if it were something bad, as if it were something that we need to avoid, as if the Children of God ought to be walking around in virtual apathy avoiding any sort of ‘heat’ for fear it will just get us into trouble.

But nothing could be further from the truth. There is such a thing as REAL ZEAL – it is just that real zeal is all about LIFE, not death. It’s about freedom, not bondage! It’s about love, not hate.

Paul had it right in Rom 13:9 when he said,

This is the TIMELESS BEAUTY of REAL ZEAL. Look again at how Paul began this chapter in verse 1. He said, “Brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved.” Paul cared for his Jewish brothers and sisters. He love the Children of Israel.

It’s important for us to understand the context of this statement. In general, the Jews were not his friends. It was the unbelieving Jews in fact who had hounded him all across Asia Minor and into Greece. It was the Jews who had repeatedly reported him to the authorities and requested his arrest.

It was the unbelieving Jews in Jerusalem who tried to stone him to death in the temple and murder him on the road to Caesarea and persuade the Roman officials to have him executed. In the Misplaced Zeal of James Kopp, you could imagine Paul justifying the death of all Jews – after all they had heard the Gospel and rejected it. They were responsible for the deaths of many Christians. In this context he could have justified the idea of taking the law into his own hands. Why not arm the Christian church and attack Jerusalem? The idea, of course, is ridiculous. It would have been Zeal without the knowledge and wisdom of God.

Real zeal is about life, not death. It’s about repentance and forgiveness and gratitude, not about getting what we deserve. In his concern for the Jews, Paul followed in the footsteps of Stephen who stared down his accusers as they stoned him to death in Acts 7:60 and prayed “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” NIV That’s ZEAL! Life in the face of Death! Forgiveness in the face of murder!

And Paul also followed in the footsteps of Jesus himself, who hung on the cross in agony and said, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do!” That’s Zeal. That’s Life in the face of Death! And this is our mission on this earth – not to be the avenging Angel or the ultimate enforcer; not to be people who stuff their faith down the throats of an unwilling people; but instead to be the harbingers of Grace, the bringers of Good News, the angels of mercy!

As Peter puts it in 1 Peter 2:9 we are “… a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that (we) may declare the praises of him who called “us” out of the darkness into his wonderful light.” NIV,

This is still our mission in this world. We must remember as Jesus said in John 3:17, that “… God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” NIV

We must “Never be lacking in zeal,” as says Paul; in Rom 12:11, “but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord.” NIV ZEAL is like FIRE.

Improperly released from the power and control of a loving God it can bring about devastation. Misplaced Zeal – rooted in too low a view of God and too high a view of man – is destructive. Down through the ages in has brought about murder and genocide and totalitarian terror to this earth..

And yet when placed in the service of God, Zeal like any fire can be a tremendous power for Good. It can bring warmth and comfort to God’s people. In back draft it can prevent forest fires – stopping the spread of evil in this world. In an engine it can power an automobile or a 747. In a hearth or an oven it can cook our food and sterilize our instruments.

Zeal in the wisdom of God is much to be desired! It is the key to an effective spiritual life. It is the best way that we can be salt and light to a dark and evil world.