The Curse of Complacency

I’ve been thinking about how things go from bad to worse. Not really thinking about how that’s true . . . but more thinking about the how it happens. The mechanism, the process by which things go from a bad situation into a very, very bad situation.
This is actually the theme to one of my favorite books. Chinua Achebe, an African author, wrote a classic of modern literature called Things Fall Apart. It’s the story of an African tribal leader by the name of Okwonko who rose from poverty to a position of great standing in his tribe. Okwonko has great wealth, he has great power, but then tragic circumstances force him to be exiled from his village for seven years. And while he is gone, things begin to fall apart. White men move into the area, and with them they bring their culture . . . their law . . . their religion. The strong African culture is changed, bit by bit, until the point when Okwonko is finally able to return that he can barely recognize it. Okwonko strives to return to the life of wealth and influence that he once knew, he tries to get back to the way things used to be, but the forces at work are so strong and so subtle that he is unable to overcome them. The story ends with Okwonko’s dreams and life collapsing around him . . . and his spirit is broken. He is powerless against the forces that seemingly conspire against him . . . the forces that cause things to fall apart, the forces that cause things to go from bad to worse.
What I’ve come to realize is that the reason things fall apart has little to do with mere circumstances, but it has everything to do with attitude and action. Things fall apart because of complacency. When people get complacent, things go from bad to worse. People settle into a routine, they think that things are good enough where they stand right now, and they get complacent. Sometimes they think that things will always be the way they are currently, so they get complacent, and things start to fall apart.
I think that you know what I mean by complacent. When people get complacent they get a little soft, a little too comfortable. They lose that edge that they used to have, the driving force that used to propel them forward. They sit back on their accomplishments and expect the past to carry them into the future.
We’ve all seen people get complacent. The Republicans will hold office for a while and then forget that they have to keep working on it, so the Democrats take over . . . only to have the same thing happen to them a few years later. Or take a guy who’s never had much money, so he watches where every single penny goes. Scrimps by for years . . . and then one day hits big with the lottery. Suddenly the guy who’s never had two nickels to rub together is the proud owner of 100 million dollars, and he gets complacent. Doesn’t watch where his money goes, because he figures he doesn’t have to any more. And you know what happens to him? A few years later the money’s gone and he’s in worse shape than he was to begin with. Or how about this: when people get complacent, a little ol’ team called Appalachian State comes along and whups your rear end for you! Complacent people forget that the other team didn’t show up to get beat, but to play . . . and play hard.
Which is what makes spiritual complacency such a scary thing! People who get spiritually complacent forget that the other team came to play hardball. They think they’re tight with God, so they don’t take spiritual things as seriously as they did just a few months ago. Sleeping in on Sunday suddenly becomes more important than it used to be. Sunday morning Bible study gets put on the back burner. Prayer grinds to a halt. But since the other team is still playing hard, the complacent folks are hearing and believing the lie that they’re still spiritually okay. Sure, they might have missed a Sunday or two (well, let’s call it eight, but who’s counting?), but in the end they’re still pretty good, right?
This is the problem that the ancient Israelites had in our Old Testament reading for today. They had it so good that they got complacent in their relationship with God.
Last week we talked about the rich exploiting the poor. The reason for that was because in Amos’ day the Israelites had a thriving economy. They were fat and happy. But their financial success had made them so spiritually complacent that they couldn’t see what was happening around them. They couldn’t see that they were living in a spiritual wasteland. Amos says in Amos 6:4-6, “4 You lie on beds inlaid with ivory and lounge on your couches. You dine on choice lambs and fattened calves. 5 You strum away on your harps like David and improvise on musical instruments. 6 You drink wine by the bowlful and use the finest lotions, but you do not grieve over the ruin of Joseph”
The country was going to pot before their very eyes, but they couldn’t see it! The poor were languishing in the streets, unable to even buy bread! Worship at the temple of Holy God –instead of being the focal point of their lives, the very thing that their entire lives revolved around—had become something they did when they felt like it. They should have been grieving and mourning over the spiritual death that surrounded them on every side! But instead, they tended to have the attitude that everything was okay. “We’re happy, we’re wealthy, we’ve got a good life . . . heck, we’re God’s chosen people, what could happen to us?”
What could happen? They could forget that they were in a covenant with God. A covenant in which God said, “Honor Me above all else. Follow my decrees. Be about My business.” The covenant clearly stated that if they honored God by following Him, they would enjoy a life of prosperity and peace. They had prosperity, they had peace . . . but they forgot the God who gave it. And so God—in His mercy—took it all away from them. “You will be the first to go into exile,” He promised . . . and they were.
In 606 B.C. Jerusalem was overthrown. And the Scriptures record in 2 Kings 24:13-14, “13 As the LORD had declared, Nebuchadnezzar removed all the treasures from the temple of the LORD and from the royal palace, and took away all the gold articles that Solomon king of Israel had made for the temple of the LORD. 14 He carried into exile all Jerusalem: all the officers and fighting men, and all the craftsmen and artisans-- a total of ten thousand. Only the poorest people of the land were left.” The people had sinned the sin of complacency . . . and God kept His word. Only the poor—the people who couldn’t afford to be complacent—were left.
You might be thinking, “Well, I’ll never get complacent! That will never happen to me!” But complacency isn’t something that happens all at once; it sneaks up on you over time. You have to actively fight complacency. You have to be constantly vigilant.
The Apostle Peter warns us in 1 Peter 5:8, “8 Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” On the surface, that sounds pretty easy to avoid, because it sounds pretty easy to spot. After all, all we have to do is be on the lookout for a ravenous beast named Satan. Once you see him, you avoid him.
But it’s not quite that easy. If it were, none of us would be spiritually complacent. You might feel like you’re not complacent.
You know how a lion eats an elephant? One bite at a time.
That’s how Satan works on you. It’s how he devours you. One . . . little . . . bite . . . at a time. He doesn’t pull us away from God all at once. That would be too obvious. I like to point out that our spiritual lives are like a compass. When we’re in tune with God, we’re facing true north. But then Satan comes in and sneaks us a little lie. Just a little lie. It still sounds like the truth, and if you’re feeling a bit complacent you’ll believe it and get taken just a few degrees off true north. Then another little lie and you’re still feeling pretty good, and now you’re a few more degrees off. And another lie. And some more complacency. And another lie. And another. And before you know it, in your complacency you’ve allowed Satan to turn you 180 degrees away from God!
One bite at a time. That’s all it takes. And if you’re not vigilant, if you’re not keeping one eye open all the time, if you’re not self-controlled and alert to the Enemy’s schemes, you’re going to get devoured . . . because you’ve allowed yourself to become spiritually complacent. The opposite of spiritual complacency is being spiritually vigilant.
Helen Hanna—a lot of you know her—has a little cross-stitched saying on her wall, and it says something to the effect of, “If you don’t feel close to God anymore . . . guess who moved?” Guess who moved? God didn’t. You got complacent . . . and so you moved. You moved away from God.
Let’s be honest, now . . . how many of us have failed to be vigilant . . . have gotten complacent. How many of us have moved? How many of us have felt far away from God?

Ephesians 2:12-13, “remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.”
We don’t need to feel far away from God. But the answer isn’t in doing more, in working harder . . . but in looking. The answer isn’t in what we can do, but in what He has done. The answer to spiritual complacency is in looking to the cross, because there we see the thing that has taken us from complacent people who are far away to redeemed people who have been brought near: the blood of Jesus Christ.
The blood of Jesus Christ keeps us near to God even when we feel far away! We get complacent, we start to move away from God, and the blood of Christ steps in and says, “No, that’s not you . . . you’re not far away. I’ve brought you close.” The blood of Christ stands as the eternal witness to the world, to the roaring lion, and to our complacency that we are close to God.
Things fall apart, they go from bad to worse because in our complacency we allow ourselves to be deceived, to turn away from God. But even when we are spiritually complacent, the blood of Christ is vigilant . . . bringing us to repentance . . . bringing us to the cross . . . bringing us back close to God.