PASTOR’S PERSPECTIVE; “Increasing our devotion as we remember their last full measure of devotion!”

     Most historians agree that the 272 word speech given by President Abraham Lincoln, on November 19, 1863, to dedicate the Battlefield of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, is one of the greatest speeches of all time. Lincoln said, “The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but they can never forge what they did here.  It is for us to be dedicated to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.  It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us-that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion-that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain…that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from  the earth”.  He called the nation never to forget the price that these brave soldiers paid to keep freedom alive.  But that was not the end of the story.  His speech challenged them to increase their devotion to the cause that they gave their last full measure of devotion!  What a worthy challenge.  As we go through the Book of Acts we too will be challenged to never forget the price some early Christians paid to further the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.  The first martyr was Stephen.  His sacrifice was soon followed by the sacrifice of James, the brother of our Lord.  As the Book of Acts ends we are anticipating the two primary Apostles, Peter and Paul, also “giving their full measure of devotion”.  Both of them do make that sacrifice under the ghastly reign of the maniacal Nero!  Their dedication reminds us of what missionary Jim Elliott said, not long before giving his life in the cause of our dear Lord.  He said, quoting Peter Marshall, “It is not the duration of our life that matters, but the donation!” 

      The giving of the full measure of devotion of Stephen, James, Peter and Paul, encouraged the early Church to follow in their train.  Many were so emboldened that they too would stand for the Lord, come what may, whatever the price, to extend the Gospel of their Blessed Lord.  In the Church of Antioch, where believers where first called Christians, in the year 70 A.D. They had a marvelous pastor by the name of Ignatius,  He was a dynamic, Spirit-filled and godly powerful preacher.  His preaching was turning the entire population of the city to Christ.  So Trajan, the Emperor of Rome, came to visit Antioch to see what was happening there concerning emperor worship-idolatry and heathenism.  He listened to that preacher Ignatius preach.  He saw the throngs turning to the Lord, and forsaking Roman gods and paganism.  He commanded that Ignatius be brought before him.  He sentenced him to be brought to Rome and to be exposed to the wild animals in the Coliseum.  The Coliseum was built about 5 years after the death of the Apostle Paul.  That means it was likely built in 72 A.D. Now the historians tell us that the first Christian to be martyred in the Coliseum was Ignatius, the pastor of the Church of Antioch. In the long journey to Rome he wrote beautiful and inspired letters. They are the treasures of Christendom to this day.  Finally coming to Rome, he was placed , sent out, stood on the sand in the center of that great arena, with tiers with thousands of spectators watching all around.  The cages were opened, and the lions were let loose.  When the leading lion ran omnivorously, carnivorously, viciously, fiercely toward God’s preacher, Ignatius held out his hand, and arm, to the leading lion, and above the crunching sound of bone and tendon, he was heard to declare, “Now I begin to be a Christian!”  That is how we honor those who gave their full measure of devotion.  That is how we increase our devotion.  That is how we honor them, and never forget them!  Willing to join them in bold courage to be faithful unto our Lord at all cost!  Another Christian martyr of the 20th century reminded us that such a commitment is not in vain.  Jim Eliot, who lost his life taking his Lord’s gospel to the Auca Indians of Ecuador, said, “He is no fool, who gives what he cannot keep, (his life), to gain what he cannot lose, (eternal reward)”.  To honor them we must never forget!  In the words of Rudyard Kipling- ” Lord God of Hosts be with us yet-  Lest we forget, Lest we forget!” (The Recessional).

PASTOR’S PERSPECTIVE:

     A few years ago, there was a toy manufacturer that was considering making a jigsaw puzzle with pieces that did not fit together, no matter how much you poured over the puzzle, experimented with this combination, or that one, you would NEVER be able to fit all the pieces into the beautiful picture that one usually gets when you expend that much energy assembling the puzzle.  I heard it exists, but I have never seen one, except in “everyday real-world life”. They said they were designing such a puzzle as a learning aid to teach children, and adults alike, that “sometimes the pieces of life do not fit nicely together”.  To be told they always do is misinformation. Someone on Facebook recently wrote about something even more frustrating.  This person said, “I Hate It When Puzzle Pieces Fit Together But the Pictures Don’t Match Up… – probably one of the most frustrating things in the world!”

     When we experience that truth then life does become an experience in “futility”.  In a published Easter message titled-“Never Die Again” Earnest Campbell tells of a grave stone in an old cemetery in Girard, Pennsylvania that has this inscription on it:

          “In memory of Ellen Shannon

            aged 26 years

            who was fatally burned

            March 21, 1870

            by the explosion of a lamp

            filled with R.E.Danforth’s

            non-exploding burning fluid”

     Campbell goes on to say, “I am tired of non-explosive fluids exploding! of fail-proof banks failing! of sure-fire programs that fall flat! of preventatives that don’t prevent! of solutions that don’t solve! of remedies that don’t cure! of panaceas that don’t pan-out!” (The Miracle of Easter, Floyd Thatcher. pg.41. 1980).  I think all of us would admit that trying to figure out these “mysteries” of life “under the sun” can leave us quite exhausted and frustrated!  That is not a modern dilemma.  There was an ancient mystery riddle that spoke to this issue.  It is called the Riddle of the Sphinx.  It went like this:

          A thing there is whose voice is one,

          Whose feet are two and four and three.

          So mutable a thing is none

          That moves in earth or sky or sea.

          When on most feet this thing doth go

          Its strength is weakest and its pace most slow.

     No one seemed to be able to solve the riddle.  Oedipus, the ancient mythological king of Thebes, achieved his fame by solving the Riddle of the Sphinx.  That answer freed his city from bondage to this powerful goddess from the underworld.  The answer was Man: for man goes on all fours when a baby, on two feet as an adult, on three feet, (with a cane), when old.  (Michael Grant, Myths of the Greeks and Romans p,196). Yes, the life of man from ancient days has remained a riddle.  A dilemma.  A futility.  No one seems to have the answer.  It has caused many to ask who am I?  How did I get here in this condition?  Where am I going?  An Ancient Chinese story relates that this dilemma is worldwide.  Chang Chou wrote:

          “How can I tell you why I am so, or am not so? 

           Once, I Chang Chou, dreamed that I was a butterfly.

           I was happy as a butterfly, I was pleased with myself,

           But I did not know that I was Chou.

           Suddenly I awoke, and there I was, visibly Chou.

           I did not know if I was Chou dreaming I was a butterfly,

           Or a butterfly dreaming it was Chou!”

           (Sourcebook of Chinese Philosophy. Princeton Press. 1963 p.190).

     That is where modern man is today.  We have been there so long we don’t even seem to greatly bothered by it now.  We just go on blindly in futility, accepting this “life of futility as our lot in life”.  G.K. Chesterton defined the problem, when he said, “It isn’t that they can’t see the solution.  It is that they can’t SEE THE PROBLEM!”  Reality is as Os Guinness says, “There is always more to knowing than human knowing will ever know!” 

(In Two Minds, Os Guinness. 1976 p. 41).  Solomon, God’s real-life Oedipus, sought to solve the riddle of man.  All his investigation led to more questions than answers.  He finally decided that God alone is the keeper of that Key, and He has not given it to anyone!  He was inspired of the Holy Spirit to record his discoveries in the Book of Ecclesiastes.  Many misunderstand the message of Ecclesiastes.  They see his discussion of pessimism, despair, self-destruction, resignation and decide he is writing about the fact that that is how life is lived apart from God.  But that is not the case.  Solomon is writing about his Spirit-inspired reflections on life.  Life is not futile only to those who live “life under the sun” apart from God-it is futile for everyone “under the sun”.  Though frustrated by his inability to understand how all that he encounters in human existence fits together, Qohelet makes a faith response to the inexplicableness of life, “choosing to enjoy life as a good gift from the Creator, and obeying His commandments, in light of the fact that one day we must give a personal accounting to Him“. 

     God had given Solomon opportunity to “bear witness” to Him by giving him greater wisdom that any other human being to date.  His fame was world renown.  He dazzled everyone, including the Queen of Sheba, with his wisdom, (see I Kings 10:1).  God had told Solomon’s father David; the nations will come to you saying “Show me something Good” (Ps. 4:6).  Moses had said God tells you, “Keep my commandments and do them; for that will be your wisdom IN THE EYES OF THE PEOPLE, (Gentile nations).  They will say, ‘what a wise and discerning people is this great nation!  Where is there a nation that has a god so near?   or laws and ordinances so just?’ “ (Deuteronomy 4:6-8).  Solomon in his life had failed to ” seize the opportunity”.  He instead was influenced by their gods, and the evil they embraced.  Ecclesiastes is God giving him a second chance to reach the nations of the world, who are also perplexed with “life under the sun” and “move them on to know and obey” the only True and Living God, who alone can give an “above the sun perspective” to those “living under the sun”. 

     There is a very convicting Inscription on the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C.  It reads:

          Thou Shalt not be a Victim.

          Thou Shalt not be a Perpetrator

          Thou Shalt not be a Bystander

     Man is a Victim.  Satan is the Perpetrator.  Jean Paul Satre says, we now live in “a world that has no doors!” i.e., there is no way out of this human dilemma, except in his view, “suicide”.  Today’s world has bought into that lie!  As Solomon played the role of a Bystander for years.  He fell to being a Victim.  He recovered and wrote a Book pointing his world to the “only Answer under the Sun“.  We too can join him, for we have the “Wisdom” of one greater that Solomon, (see Matthew 12:43) who has promised us “life more abundantly if lived under the Son!” (John 10:10).  As a Christian witness, “show them the answer!” If you must-use words! (Francis of Assisi- “Preach the Gospel-if you must use words”).

PASTOR’S PERSPECTIVE:  “The Road To…Going…Going…Gone!”

     A wife came home from Church.  The husband, in his easy chair reading the paper, asked what the preacher preached about today.  She begins setting lunch on the table, and replies “Sin”.  The husband inquired further, “what did he say about it?”  His wife replied quite matter-of-factly-“he’s agin’ it!”  Quite a brief answer for such a voluminous subject!  Today it would be a rare discussion of what did the preacher have to say about sin.  The subject rarely receives a mention in a sermon, let alone a full-blown discussion.  Back in the seventies Karl Meninger noticed the disappearance of sin from our society and wrote his famous book-Whatever Became of Sin?  I think that all of us would agree from our own personal experience that sin is alive and well and an ever present reality, both in our world and even, to some degree in our own lives!  Matthew 24:7 warns us that in the last days “iniquity shall abound to overflowing…causing the love of many to grow cold”. Though he died in 2003, the greatest theologian that America has ever produced, Carl F.H. Henry, warned us off this very onslaught, way back in 1988.  He said, “We may now live in the half-generation, before all hell breaks loose, and if its fury is contained, we will be remembered, if we are remembered at all, as though who used our hands and hearts, and minds and bodies to plug the dikes against the impending doom!”  I think that since that time we have witnessed the dikes’ dissolution and the flooding of our world with unbridled sin and lawlessness.  We have grown so accustomed to the change that we can’t even remember when things were distinctly Christian and different!  Though we live in the midst of a world that Isaiah warned would call “evil good and good evil, put darkness for light and light for darkness, and exchange bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter” (Isaiah 5:20), we cannot avoid the devastating consequences of sin. 

     William Barclay, in his commentary on Romans, wrote, “Sin begets sin.  The first time we do a wrong thing, we may do it with hesitation, and a tremor and a shudder.  The second time we do it is easier.  If we go on doing it, it becomes effortless; sin loses its terror.  To start on the path of sin is to go one to more and more” (Romans p.92).  John Henry Jowett wrote words many years ago that still sting with relevance today:  “Sin is a blasting presence, and every fine power shrinks and withers in its destructive heat.  Every spiritual delicacy succumbs to its malignant touch…Sin impairs sight, and works toward blindness.  Sin numbs the hearing and tends to make men deaf.  Sin perverts the taste, causing men to confound the sweet with the bitter, and the bitter with the sweet.  Sin hardens the touch, and eventually renders a man past feeling.  All of these are Scriptural analogies, and their common significance appears to be this-sin blocks and chokes the fine senses of the spirit: by sin we are desensitized, rendered imperceptive, and the range of our correspondence is diminished.  Sin creates callosity.  It hoofs the spirit, and so reduces the area of our exposure to its pain” Jay Adams, Christian Counselor, agrees.  In his book Competent to Counsel, he writes: “One lie has to be covered by a dozen more…The downward cycle of sin moves from a problem to a faulty sinful response, thereby causing an additional complicating problem which is met by…additional sinful responses…making sinful habits hard to break, but if not broken, they will bind you in an ever more tightly binding hold.  You will be held by these ropes…in a downward cycle…and at length you will become sin’s slave”.  He sounds a lot like Jesus in John 8, who said, “He who keeps on committing sin will become a slave to sin”.  To illustrate this truth, let me quote a story told by Charles Swindoll, in his book The Finishing Touch:  “A bazaar was held in a village in northern India.  Everyone brought his wares to sell or trade.  One old farmer brought in a whole covey of quail.  He had tied a string around each leg of each bird.  The other end of each string was tied to a large ring which loosely fit over a central stick.  He had taught the quail to walk dolefully in a circle around and around, like mules in a sugarcane mill.  Nobody seemed interested in buying the quail.  A devout Brahma came along.  He believed in the Hindu idea of respect for all life.  His heart of compassion went out to those poor little creatures walking in a monotonous circle, when they were created to fly.  I want to buy them all, he said.  The merchant was elated.  After giving him the money, the Brahma told him-now set them free.  The farmer said-what?  Set them all free at once!  The farmer snipped the strings off the legs of each bird.  The birds still continued to walk in a circle.  Even after they were shooed away, they landed a few feet away and resumed their predictable march!  Free…unfettered…released…they kept going in circles as if they were still tied to each other!”  So are the destructive and paralyzing consequences of sin on every one of us.  That is why the Scripture records over nine Hebrew words for sin in the Old Testament and over 13 Greek words for sin in the New Testament.  God, in his Word, paints an accurate picture of what sin is, and clearly shows us what sin will do if we do not avail ourselves to the one they call the Savior.  He is the only one who can “set us free” from sin.  He is the only true and faithful deliverer.  He is the only true answer to the sin question!  If we fail to trust Him, and the power of His cross, to transform us and set us free indeed the results will be eternally devastating!

     Let me illustrate the reality of this with a true story.  Though this story happened many years ago, it is repeated daily in our modern era as well.  “A man was admitted to the Bellevue Hospital in New York City.  He was a charity case-one among hundreds.  A drunken bum from the Bowery, with his throat slashed.  The Bowery…the last stop before the Morgue.  Synonym of filth, loneliness, cheap booze, drugs, and disease!  The derelict’s name was misspelled on the hospital’s form, but then what good is a name when the guy’s a bum!  The age was also incorrect.  It was listed at 39-thought he looked twice that age.  Someone might have said how sad for someone so young to be in such a condition.  No one did because no one cared!  The details of what happened in the predawn of that chilly winter morning in New York were fuzzy.  The nurses shrugged it off. They had seen thousands like him, and would likely see thousands more.  His health was gone.  He was starving.  He had been found in a heap, bleeding from a deep gash in his throat.  His forehead badly bruised and he was semi-conscious.  A doctor used black sewing thread to suture his wound.  He was taken back outside and dumped near the Bowery again.  There he languished and died.  Nobody really cared.  He was just another bum!  A friend came seeking for him at a later time.  He was directed to the morgue.  There among dozens of other nameless corpses, this man was identified.  They scraped together his belongings.  A ragged dirty coat.  38 cents from his pocket.  A scrap of paper from his other pocket.  All his earthly goods!  Enough money perhaps for one more night in the Bowery, at that time, and a paper with five words-‘Dear friends and gentle hearts’.  Almost like the words to a song, someone may have thought-and they would have been right!  Once upon a time this man, this victim from the Bowery, had written songs that literally made the whole world sing!  Songs like-Camptown Races; Oh Susanna; Beautiful Dreamer; Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair; Old Folks at Home; My Old Kentucky Home; and over two hundred more that have become deeply rooted in our rich American Heritage.  The victim of his own sin was Stephen Collins Foster!  An American Treasure thrown away to sin’s destruction”.  Makes me think of an old poem that preachers have quoted for years: 

     “And many a man with life out of tune,

     And battered and scarred with sin,

     Is auctioned cheap to the thoughtless crowd,

     Much like the old violin.

     A mess of pottage, a glass of wine;

     A game and he travels on.

     He’s going once, and going twice

    He’s going and he’s almost gone!”

     The sad truth of human experience is that the story is repeated ad infinitum ad naseum.  Only the names and faces have changed.  Tragedies of sin!  That is why they call Jesus Savior.  He alone has the power to rescue and save.  He alone is the Answer to the Sin Question.  Today’s message shows how He is the Answer for anyone who is willing to invite Him in to rescue from sin’s destruction.