Preached by Asahel Adams — August 22, 2018
The Pattern of God and the Peril of Indifference
The burden that presses upon my heart tonight concerns a deep-seated mentality—a habitual disposition of mind—that, if not exposed and rooted out, can rob us of the promises of God and leave us defeated, even while everything outwardly seems to be in our favor.
At times, I look upon my own ministry, my family, and the new congregations around the world for whom I bear a burden, and I measure what I see—both in myself and in those I love—against the pattern I find in the men and women of God whose fruit I long to emulate. When I perceive a discrepancy, it catches my attention. When I see in the founders of this fellowship, those faithful elders who went before us, a certain pattern of life and spirit, and then observe a different pattern emerging in myself or among my brethren, my spirit becomes alert.
The apostle Paul wrote, “Not that I have already attained… but one thing I do: forgetting what is behind, I press on toward the goal.” And immediately after he adds, “You have us as a pattern.” (Phil 3:12–17). That word pattern—the Greek tupos—means a die-cast mold, a definite form, something solid and unambiguous. It is not a suggestion, but a standard. Paul was unashamed to hold himself and those who walked with him forth as such a pattern: “Follow me as I follow Christ.”
We must find the right pattern. We will not perfectly reproduce it—we will make our share of mistakes—but we must at least have the mold shaped by God. People find their path in God in one of two ways: either they are given the right pattern from heaven and walk in it, or God intervenes catastrophically to correct them. We thank God for every merciful intervention, but it would be folly to presume upon such miracles—to adopt a wrong pattern and then expect God to swoop in and rescue us each time we misbuild the house.
My burden, then, is not only for myself but for every parent, every leader, every saint in this fellowship. There is a danger—especially among parents—of leaning back into a kind of spiritual complacency, assuming that the youth ministry or a powerful meeting will somehow make up the difference. We thank God for those influences, but they are not the compass by which we set our course. God has His own mold, His own pattern of life into which He intends to conform us (Rom 12:2).
Across the ages, men have set forth many ideals of the “perfect man”: the Greek philosopher-king, the English gentleman, the southern nobleman, the scientist, the athlete. But there is only one who is “the image of the invisible God,” the outshining of His very essence, “the exact representation of His being”—Jesus Christ (Col 1:15; Heb 1:3). In Him dwelt all the fullness of the Godhead bodily (Col 2:9). He is the pattern. Yet we follow others only insofar as they follow Him (1 Cor 11:1).
There is, however, one persistent pattern that sabotages our transformation into His image. It is difficult to name because it is chiefly a lack of something: a lack of gravity, a lack of earnestness—a quiet indifference toward what seem to be small matters. It manifests as a habitual failure to take sin, negligence, or compromise seriously until they bear visible fruit.
When I compare those whose lives have borne abiding fruit with those whose fruit has withered, I see one glaring contrast. On one side stands a holy seriousness; on the other, a gentle disengagement, a smiling indifference. And this contrast, this divergence of spirit, is what I must speak to tonight. Which of these reflects the pattern of God?
You already know the answer.
But this question cuts to the root of how we raise our children, how we respond to failure and sin in our own hearts, and how we judge matters within the body of Christ. It touches everything—from the hidden attitudes of the home to the public life of the church.
The Family as God’s Revolution
This principle reaches first into our families. The change that must come begins not in the outward fruit of our children but in the inner posture of the parents. Before the vine bears new grapes, the root must be renewed. The father and mother must first believe that change must come, and then believe that change will come—because without faith it is impossible to please God. Those who come to Him must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him (Heb 11:6).
If the transformation is not regarded as a necessity, it will never become a possibility. And if it is not believed possible, it will never become reality. But the word that proceeds from God upholds all things—including trembling knees and feeble hands. He can make straight paths for your feet (Heb 12:12-13). What He commands, He gives grace to perform.
When God set out to revolutionize the world, to inaugurate the birth of monotheism and alter the course of human thought, He did not begin with an empire, a crusade, or a broadcast. He called one man out of an incompatible culture and one woman to walk beside him. He taught that man how to be a father and that woman how to be a mother. A century of patience passed while He shaped them into instruments of covenant, and from that single household He launched the greatest spiritual revolution history would ever see.
The Almighty said to Abraham, “In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” But before that blessing could flow outward, He said, “I have known him that he may command his children and his household after him, to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice.” (Gen 18:18-19). God’s plan for world renewal began not with an institution but with a family.
It took time for that seed to sprout, for the sprout to become a tree, and for the branches to hang heavy with fruit reaching even to the Gentiles—but in due season the promise ripened. The Son of God did not descend with a flaming sword to subdue the nations. He came as a baby, born into a household, and “was subject to His parents in all things” (Lk 2:51). God loves families. He entrusts more consequence to the quiet perseverance of a father and mother than to all the programs, crusades, and campaigns conceived by men.
The Wet Blanket of Indifference
Yet this divine pattern is continually threatened by a spirit of indifference. Many fathers—gifted, humble, and sincere—possess the right intentions but lack holy zeal. Everything is taken in stride, wrapped in a smile and a pleasant tone. But beneath that good-natured calm is a wet blanket that smothers fervor and stifles transformation. It is not the pattern of Christ.
Why do parents grow lackadaisical? One reason is that they fail to recognize the positive potential hidden in their children. They do not see that the small boy at play may be a Moses or a Timothy, that the quiet girl may one day shape generations by her faith. God’s purpose often outstrips our imagination, and indifference blinds us to it. You may not know whom you are raising—but God does, and He relies on your faithfulness to form His vessel.
The second reason for apathy is more perilous: we fail to reckon with the power of sin. We underestimate the warfare into which every soul is born. We act as though evil were a mild influence, easily managed by common sense and good temperament. Consequently, our efforts are half-hearted, haphazard, and inconsistent. We recoil from “overreacting,” yet I see far fewer who overreact than who underreact. We are seldom alarmed by dangerous sin in its infant stages because we have too little experience of its devastating power.
Throughout Scripture, God seems—by human judgment—to “overreact.” In truth, He is recognizing deadly sin at its conception. When He drove man from the Garden because of a single act of disobedience, was that overreaction—or discernment of peril in its earliest form? (Gen 3:22-24).
Consider Moses, the righteous servant chosen to deliver Israel. On his journey to Egypt, the Lord met him and sought to kill him (Ex 4:24-26). Why? Because he had neglected the covenant sign of circumcision for his son. His Midianite wife recoiled from what seemed a painful and unnecessary demand, but she failed to see that divine favor is not scattered indiscriminately; it flows within the bounds of covenant obedience. God was not harsh—He was holy, protecting His purpose from compromise at the outset.
Was He overreacting? No. He was catching sin in its infant stage.
When Saul, newly anointed king, violated the prophet’s command and offered a sacrifice out of impatience, did God overreact in stripping the kingdom from him? (1 Sam 13:8-14). Saul’s act appeared small, even pious. Yet it betrayed the root of rebellion that would one day destroy him.
The pattern is consistent: whenever God moves decisively, He is not impulsive; He is identifying rebellion before it flowers.
Recognizing Sin Before It Matures
When we turn to the New Testament, we find the same divine severity—not capricious cruelty, but holy clarity. God’s servants in both covenants treated sin as a living thing that must be slain in its cradle.
Jesus began to teach His disciples that He would suffer and be killed. Peter, out of affection and human logic, took Him aside and said, “Far be it from You, Lord; this shall not happen to You.” At once the Lord turned and said, “Get behind Me, Satan, for you are not mindful of the things of God but the things of men” (Mt 16:22-23). Was that an overreaction? No—Christ was confronting the embryonic thought that the will of man might evade the cross. He saw the serpent’s egg before it hatched.
When Peter later drew back from eating with Gentile believers in Antioch, the apostle Paul did not whisper correction in private. He “withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed,” rebuking him before all for hypocrisy (Gal 2:11-14). Was Paul too severe? Hardly. He was preserving the newborn liberty of the gospel from suffocation beneath old prejudice.
When Simon the sorcerer offered money to buy the power of the Spirit, Paul’s words struck like thunder: “Your money perish with you, for you thought the gift of God could be purchased with silver. … You are in the gall of bitterness and the bond of iniquity.” Blindness fell upon the man for a season (Acts 8:18-23). Was the apostle cruel, or was he recognizing sin in its infant stages? These men were not harsh; they were awake, aware of the war. They understood that the smallest seed of pride, deceit, or rebellion will one day grow into a tree whose fruit is death.
The Chronology of Sin
Scripture reveals a solemn progression: “Desire, when it has conceived, gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death” (Jas 1:15). Every transgression begins invisibly—in thought, in inclination, in a quiet indulgence of self-will. Left unchallenged, it gestates until it is born as action, then matures into bondage, and at last ends in death.
If we could see sin in its final form—its destruction of souls, families, and nations—we would recoil from its first suggestion. But because we meet it as an innocent impulse, we treat it lightly. Parents often recognize rebellion only when it has become defiance. The believer often only discovers and activities against lust when it has become a scandal. Elders often seem blind to pride until it has shattered communion and ripped apart a church. Yet the wise parent, the wise believer, deals with sin while it is still a whisper, while repentance may still be simple.
Think how a mother would act if her child were about to step into traffic. She would not reason softly; she would cry out, reach, pull with all her might. And yet that same mother, seeing the first signs of deceit or defiance in her child’s heart, often smiles indulgently, saying, “Kids will be kids.” She does not see that character forming is the soul walking toward an unseen cliff. If she could glimpse the outcome, she would act with the same desperation she would show at the edge of a canyon.
Those who suppress all zeal and conviction in correction imagine they are being spiritual, but they train their children to feel nothing from them. Discipline without heart breeds resentment; yet passion controlled by love awakens reverence. A father who cries, “My son, do not do this!” from the depths of his being is far nearer the heart of God than the one who lectures in icy detachment (Prov 3:12).
Catching the Foxes
“Catch for us the foxes, the little foxes that ruin the vineyards,” wrote Solomon (Song 2:15). The vineyard is our family, our soul, our fellowship. The fruit is tender, full of promise, but small compromises—the “little foxes”—gnaw at the vine until it bears no sweetness. The wise gardener acts quickly, not because he enjoys severity, but because he loves the harvest.
Indifference kills slowly. Many parents or leaders awaken only when the vineyard lies in ruins. If we would recognize sin in ourselves while it is yet a desire—while it is still only conceived in thought—we could destroy it with a word, instead of waiting until tragedy must do the work with its blunt sword. Early repentance is mercy; late repentance is often mourning.
The Leaven of Tolerance and the Weight of Folly
Paul wrote to the church at Corinth, to a congregation bursting with power gifts yet careless with holiness. There was a man among them living in open immorality, and the saints, instead of grieving, were boasting of their tolerance. They imagined themselves broad-hearted because they could hold both God’s will and the devil’s work in the same embrace. But Paul’s word pierced their vanity: “Your boasting is not good. Don’t you know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?” And then the charge: “Purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, even as you are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover, has been sacrificed” (1 Cor 5:6–7).
The apostle was saying, in essence, “Because Christ paid the ultimate price, you must pay the price of purity.” Grace is not leniency; it is the power to cleanse. A church—or a family—that prides itself on tolerance of sin is like a baker congratulating himself on how evenly the yeast has spread through the dough. The whole batch will rise, but not to heaven.
This spirit of indulgent tolerance has become the emblem of our age. We see parents strolling through stores while a child screams, strikes, and defies, yet the parent smiles pleasantly to show composure. They pride themselves on their calm as though apathy itself were righteousness. But what is really on display is the tragic inversion of love. True love will not stand idle while the soul of a child unravels. We have confused niceness with goodness and sentiment with holiness. It is easier to be liked than to be respected, but heaven measures neither by smiles.
What those smiling parents teach, though they do not say it aloud, is that there are no boundaries. And a person who learns no boundaries will one day tumble beyond them. The mother of a murderer (Ted Bundy) can still say, “I will always love my sweet boy,” but her son’s ruin was planted in the soil of uncorrected folly. Love that will not warn is not love at all.
The Dead Flies in the Ointment
Solomon declared, “As dead flies give perfume a bad smell, so a little folly outweighs wisdom and honor” (Eccl 10:1). Wisdom and honor may fill a house like fragrance, but a single folly left to decay will sour the air. How many ministers of great ability and insight lose the savor of their testimony because of one tolerated foolishness! How many homes, blessed with insight and sincerity, are discredited by the antics of undisciplined children while their parents talk profoundly of the kingdom above the noise of its foolish ruin in their offspring! The perfume of revelation is in their talk, but the fly makes the anointing oil a mockery.
If you possess honor, defend it; if you have wisdom, guard it; for a little folly can outweigh them both. We are not called merely to admire truth but to maintain it. The holy fragrance must be preserved from corruption.
The Sin of Doing Nothing
To the indifferent, Solomon also wrote: “How long will you lie there, O sluggard? A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest—and poverty will come upon you like a thief, and scarcity like an armed man” (Prov 6:9–11). This applies not only to fields but to souls. What must a man do to lose the treasures of grace? Nothing. What must a family do to forfeit the presence of God? Nothing. The great sin of our time is omission—the quiet refusal to act.
Seventeenth-century wisdom put it this way: “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” Indifference is the armed man who strips the vineyard bare. Families perish not through persecution but through passivity. We soothe ourselves with phrases like “That doesn’t bother me,” but the question is, Does it bother God? For He is not a God of confusion but of peace, and He has ordained that all things be done fittingly and in order (1 Cor 14:33, 40).
When disorder reigns and the Spirit is grieved, the fault lies not with the children but with the parents who refuse to train them. The child’s folly is a mirror of parental indifference. To wink at rebellion is to invite ruin.
The Tragic Line of Failed Fathers
Scripture records a sobering lineage of parental failure. Eli honored his sons above God, and the ark departed from Israel (1 Sam 2–4). Samuel, though mighty in prophecy, could not guide his own household, and his sons turned aside for gain (1 Sam 8:1–3). David, a man after God’s heart, wept bitterly as rebellion rose from within his own house (2 Sam 15). Each loved God; each failed to restrain folly when it was small. The pattern is repeated through history: a calling, an anointing, and then—by a little negligence—collapse.
A touch of folly can outweigh a lifetime of honor. Therefore, the wise man trembles at small beginnings of sin, not at its public shame. When rebellion first stirs in a child—or in one’s own heart—it must be recognized for what God calls it. “Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness as idolatry” (1 Sam 15:23). The Lord equates rebellion—self-will—with sorcery because both invoke powers contrary to His Spirit. To tolerate rebellion is to invite witchcraft into one’s home.
Even a child is known by his deeds, “by whether his conduct is pure and right” (Prov 20:11). Parents cannot choose their children’s future faith, but they can enforce God’s order in their present home. To do less is to betray both love and truth.
Whatever It Takes
Some might say, “All this belongs to the Old Testament. Jesus was gentler.” But listen to His own words: “If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better to enter life maimed than to go into hell whole, where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched” (Mk 9:43-48).
Was the Lord recommending self-mutilation? No! None of His followers ever did such a thing, nor did He commend them for it. He was revealing how sin must be treated—with absolute, uncompromising resolve. When something in your life leads you into transgression, remove it at any cost. Whatever it takes.
He was teaching that genuine repentance may alter the way we see, act, and appear to others. It may carry a stigma; people may notice that something is missing. Yet it is far better to reach heaven bearing the scars of self-denial than to reach hell unscathed but eaten from within. Do the least that it takes, but whatever it takes—separate yourself from sin!
An attitude of bitterness, discontent, or envy may seem harmless, a mere passing mood. But it is already conception. Leave it unchecked, and it will undergo gestation until it is born as open sin, and when sin is finished, it brings forth death (Jas 1:15). The heart is the womb of iniquity as well as of righteousness. Every indulgence tolerated today matures into bondage tomorrow.
The Tragedy of Spiritual Myopia
Moses sang of a generation “without sense, with no discernment,” lamenting, “If only they were wise and would consider their latter end! How could one man chase a thousand, or two put ten thousand to flight, unless their Rock had sold them?” (Deut 32:28-30).
When the people of God find themselves constantly defeated, the reason is not fate but forsakenness. The Rock has been abandoned. Yet the God who withdraws His hand in judgment still draws near to contrition: “The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit” (Ps 34:18). “A broken and contrite heart, O God, You will not despise” (Ps 51:17).
The remedy is not new technique but repentance—returning to the beginning, to the pattern of God. For “if God be for us, who can be against us?” (Rom 8:31). But if the smallest sin stands unjudged, we discover the reverse: if God be against us, who can be for us?
The apostle Paul urged believers, “Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you—unless indeed you fail the test?” (2 Cor 13:5). The test is simple: greater is He who is in you, or greater is he who is in the world? If defeat rules where Christ should reign, it is time to rewind and repent.
Peter warned of those who once possessed spiritual sight but lost it: “If these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective and unfruitful… But whoever lacks them is nearsighted unto blindness, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins” (2 Pet 1:8-9). Spiritual myopia—short-sightedness—is the disease of the complacent. We forget the corruption from which we were delivered and thus fail to recognize it when it returns in miniature. We see today’s temptation, but not tomorrow’s death to which it leads.
The Chronology of Faith
Yet Scripture not only describes the chronology of sin, but it also reveals the chronology of faith. “From faith to faith,”Paul writes, “the righteousness of God is revealed” (Rom 1:17). As sin moves from desire to death, so faith moves from belief to fruitfulness. The kingdom of God itself follows this pattern: it is like a seed hidden in a field. It germinates unseen, grows slowly, and in time becomes the greatest plant in the garden (Mk 4:30-32).
So it is with the work of grace in a family. God still desires a revolution to sweep the earth, and He still begins with homes. “When they see your children, the work of My hands, they will sanctify My name and glorify the God of Israel”(Isa 29:23). The reformation of the world begins when fathers and mothers, awed by the holiness of small things, catch sin in its infant stages and nurture faith in its earliest shoots. The kingdom grows through those who will not despise the day of small beginnings.
Let us, then, take heed to the little foxes and to the first stirrings of desire. Let us train our children, and ourselves, to discern the faint shadow of evil before it matures into night. Let us act—decisively, lovingly, fervently—whatever it takes. For the God who calls us to holiness also grants the power to walk in it. And when His pattern governs our homes, our hearts, and our fellowship, the fruit will reach over the wall and bless the nations.