Yesterday on Things Unseen I mentioned a famous sermon by the great Scottish preacher Thomas

Chambers. I think this is podcast number 252 this year, and you'll forgive me if I honestly

can't remember whether I've mentioned Chambers sermon before or not. It was on 1st

John chapter 2 titled The Expulsive Power of a New Affection. And it went to the heart

of how our lives can't be transformed by all the efforts we make to screw up the strength

or the courage to stop doing something or to overcome it and to start doing something

else. Yes, things need to be expelled, we know that. But the gospel doesn't transform

us by creating a vacuum of us, getting rid of things in our lives. If we try to do that,

we'll be like the man in Jesus' parable who swept the house clean of an evil spirit,

but then when the spirit discovered the house had been swept clean, it fetches another

seven spirits more evil than itself and occupies the house, and says Jesus the last state

of that person is worse than the first. So how do we get out of this vicious circle?

Well, let me try this another way. I know it's always dangerous to use an illustration

from a world outside your own expertise, but let me try this. Perhaps like me, you've

often sat on a large airplane. And the thought has crossed your mind. How an earth is this

thing going to fly? With all these people on board and their luggage, never mind the

weight of the plane. Apparently, a fully fueled, ready-to-go Boeing 737-800 weighs about

60,000 kilos or about 130,000 pounds. And that's before you stepped onto it. Can air traffic

control suspend the law of gravity and enable that plane to fly? Well, of course not.

The plane flies because it's designed to employ the laws of aerodynamics. And it's

when these new principles are thrown into operation. In a sense, the power of gravity,

I say in a sense, is nullified. And spiritually speaking, what we need is something just like

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