PASTOR’S PERSPECTIVE: “LAST DAY BATTLEFIELD-THE HEART OF MAN”

     In his book, The Brother’s Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky poignantly states, “The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible.  God and the devil are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man”.  That battle involves recognizing truth-God’s truth.  The devil is, and always has been, in the business of perverting God’s truth into a lie, and getting man to believe it, and thus choose the path of error and destruction.  He is a master of deception and his lies are passing for truth quite successfully in our Post-Christian world.  Paul warned us that in the last days we would be inundated with “doctrines of demons”(   I Tim. 4:1), and that God would let the world “believe a lie, because they believed not the truth” (II Thes. 2:11).  Man’s problem today is not knowing the truth, but “suppressing” and “rejecting” the truth in exchange for a lie.  Dostoevsky warned about that too.  He wrote, “Above all don’t lie to yourself.  The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lies comes to the point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others, and having no respect he ceases to know love”.  That I believe is a very accurate description of the very condition modern man finds himself in.  David Roper, in his book A Beacon in the Darkness, hits the nail on the head, when he writes, “We live in a world of cosmic deceit, hidden agendas, treacherous motivations, illusions, and lies.  And Satan is behind it all.  His strategy is to deceive.  His objective is to destroy.  His shrewd cruel mind is behind the lies that buffet us all day long, the media messages that encourage us to ‘find ourselves’ in something other than the living God, to go for the gusto, but to leave the Savior out.  The lie comes into the world in the guise of beauty and good, (our minds are repelled by ugliness and obvious evil), but the deceit inevitably sickens the soul and it begins to die.  For when Satan has accomplished his purpose and separated men and women from God, what can they do but wither and die eternally?”  That is why Isaiah warned, “Woe to them that call evil good, and good evil; that call darkness light, and light darkness” ( Isaiah 5:20).  Denis deRougement, in a book entitled The Devil’s Share, clarifies the plight of our modern world with more clarity than anyone I have ever read.  He says the problem today is compounded by the difference between a lie and a pure lie.  This is what he says, “There are two ways of lying, as there are two ways of deceiving a customer.  If a scale registers 15 ounces, you can say, ‘it is a pound’.  Your lie will remain relative to an invariable measure of the true. If the customer checks it he can see that he is being robbed, and he knows by how much you are robbing him; a truth remains as a judge between you.  But if you tamper with the scale itself, it is the criterion of the truth which is denatured; there is no longer any possible control.  And little by little you will forget that you are cheating.  You may even bet that you will exercise all your scruples in giving exact weight, perhaps by adding a few pinches for ‘good measure’, for the smile of the buyer and the satisfaction of your virtue.  That is ‘pure lying’, the moment you falsify the scale of truth itself, all your virtues are at the service of evil and are accomplices in its contagion”.  The devil has tampered with the scale.  He has caused us to throw out the accurate scale of God’s inspired Word, and receive his counterfeit scale.  When the standard is corrupted, even honorable people become agents of evil.  They believe they are doing right when in fact what they are doing is dead wrong, and they unwittingly foist their wrong-doing on others.  That is what has happened today.  Satan has moved the parameters so that even ‘principled people’ have been brought into the service of evil.  Their lack of a fixed reference point has led them into profound moral confusion and deep sense of insecurity.  I saw a cartoon once depicting two people talking.  One said to the other, “I still believe in evil-I just don’t know what qualifies!”  People still believe in good and evil, it’s just that no one knows where the parameters are anymore-and that makes for a very dangerous and uncertain world!  Black is white; white is black; up is down, and down is up;  we are turned loose, without an anchor, of a raging sea helplessly tossed about by whichever way the cultural wind blows.  We will end up destroyed on the rocks unless we turn back to the Word that transcends culture and circumstance, and is older than time!

     It seems to me that Norman Maclean raises that question in his book A River Runs Through It.  His book and Robert Redford’s movie about how A Presbyterian minister tries to teach his sons about life through fly fishing and spiritual wisdom.  One son seems to find the truth, while the other refuses the guidance and help and remains a free-spirited son who drinks too much, lives too fast, and eventually loses his life in a back-alley brawl.  The father tries, through the medium of fly fishing, to pass on to his sons the underlying, unchanging values of his life.  Maclean recalls one streamside exchange with his father:  “‘What have you been reading?’I asked.  ‘A book’, my father replied.  It was on the ground on the other side of him.  So I would not have to bother to look over his knees to see it, he said, ‘A good Book’.  Then he told me, ‘in the part I was reading it says the Word was in the beginning, and that’s right.  I used to think that water was first, but if you listen carefully you will hear the words underneath the water’.  ‘That’s because you’re a preacher first and then a fisherman’, I told him.  ‘No’, my father said, ‘You are not listening carefully.  The water runs over the words.  Paul will tell you the same thing.’ I looked to see where the book was left open and knew just enough Greek to recognize ‘logos’ as the Word.  I guessed from it and from the argument that I was looking at the first verse of John’ “.  Mclean emphasizes that we can take the truth and try to help but it has to be received, not rejected.    Mclean writes, “Each one of us here today will at one time in our lives look upon a loved one who is in need and ask the same question:  We are willing to help, Lord, but what, if anything, is needed?  For it is true we can seldom help those closest to us.  Either we don’t know what part of ourselves to give or, more often than not, the part we have to give is not wanted.  And so it is those we live with and should know are the ones who elude us.  But we can still love them-we can love completely without complete understanding”. 

SERMON:  The Treasure of a New Heart.

Matthew 6:19-34.

I. THE HEART…SOURCE OF OUR SIN.
II.  THE HEART…THE STRUGGLE WITH SIN.
III.   THE HEART…OUR SALVATION FROM SIN.

PASTOR’S PERSPECTIVE:  “HELPING GOD PAINT HIS MASTERPIECE”

     The year was 1787.  A group of Baptist Clergymen were meeting to debate whether it is the responsibility and duty of Christians to spread the Gospel.  William Carey, after reading the sermons of Jonathan Edwards, and the Diary of David Brainerd, was feeling an overwhelming call to share the Gospel with those who desperately needed to meet the Savior.  He was trying to enlist others to join him in the Divine endeavor.  It was at that meeting, that a very hyper-Calvinist Baptist Clergy, by the name of John Collett Rylands, told William Carey, “Sit down young man, when God pleases to convert the heathen, He will do it without your help or mine!”  That statement did not dissuade William Carey and neither should it give us hesitation.  In Matthew 9 we read about Jesus weeping over the multitudes of lost and perishing people of His day.  He was visibly shaken and wept over them.  He then told his disciples to join Him in the activity of praying for, and persuading those very people to come to Him.  He issues the same challenge to us today.  What a privilege for us.  Followers of Jesus are co-laborers with Him in His ministry of Seeking and Saving those who are perishing!  But we must, as true followers of Him, possess the qualities that were in the nature of our Great God and Savior Jesus Christ.

     John Ruskin, famous poet and art critic, once said that a great artist must possess three qualities: (1) An eye to see and appreciate the beauty of the scene that he desires to capture and catch on canvas.  (2) A heart to feel and register the beauty and the atmosphere of the scene (3) A hand to perform -to transfer to canvas what the eye has seen and the heart has felt.  Those same qualities were resident in our Savior and necessary to all who would follow and join Him in the work of taking broken pieces and building them into beautiful possibilities.  Jesus focused on those who needed Him.  He had an eye that identified them.  He never looked past them!  He focused on them.  The images He saw broke His heart!  The eyes that saw them soon filled with tears of compassion for them.  Jesus saw the blind men; Jesus saw the lepers; Jesus saw the deaf; the dumb; the paralytics.  He saw the hated publicans; he saw the prostitutes; He saw the woman at the well; He saw the demoniac at Gadara; He saw Zacchaeus in the Sycamore tree; He saw the woman with the hemorrhage; He saw the Centurion weeping over his child that had died.  Someone has said, “Eyes that look are common-Eyes that See are rare!”  Jesus had eyes that saw.  Really saw!
     But what Jesus focused on moved Him to feeling.  They broke His heart!  Matthew 9:36 says “When He saw the crowds-He had compassion on them!”  The word compassion means “to feel with”.  Their needs touched Him deeply. The disciples were known for being able to see the needs of people but not moved to compassion.  They could ignore the woman with the issue of blood.  Jesus said, “Who touched me”.  They were bothered by the “little Children” and wanted to keep them away from Jesus.  Jesus said, “Permit them to come to me, forbid them not!”  They wanted to send the multitudes away hungry, but Jesus said have them sit down, “we must feed them and meet their needs!”  That is our compassionate Savior!  A.W. Tozer said that the problem with not focusing on the desperate needs of others, and not feeling compassion for their needs is because we are too occupied with our own needs and happiness.  He called it “our irresponsible pursuit of happiness” that keeps us preoccupied with ourselves.  We would rather enjoy our own happiness than to be gripped by other people’s needs, hurts, and sorrows.  We never focus on them, so we never feel with them. Our Savior did both!  Someone has said that television and movies have had a deleterious effect on the emotions of our generation.  Constant familiarity with scenes of tragedy, horror, violence, and simulated emotion has made our emotions so superficial that it is difficult to feel anything deeply. We see terrible scenes, are shocked for a moment, then turn to the next program.  We have grown emotionally superficial, and that has spilled over into our spiritual lives!  Not Jesus.  A weeping God!  What a concept!  Tears streamed down His cheeks, as His heart broke for the very ones He would be crucified to save. 

     Jesus’ focus led to His feeling.  But His feeling led to His forming.  He in turn moved into action.  He had an eye to focus; a heart to feel; and a hand to form and perform a work that would transform lives.  Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan.  There was a victim in great need-perishing.  The priest saw the victim-but “passed by on the other side”.  The Levite too saw him, stopped and looked closer, but “passed by on the other side”.  But Jesus said, “The Samaritan” (and his enemies called Him a Samaritan-see John 8), had compassion, stopped and did all that was necessary to save the fallen one.  Then He told all of us to “go and do likewise”.  Without the eye to “focus”; the heart “to feel”; and the hand “to form, perform, and transform” we will not follow through.  Jesus told His disciples “to look on the fields” white and ready to harvest.  Then pray for laborers.  It is hard to pray for laborers and not be willing to join the workers who are involved in the good harvest. 

     The prophet Jeremiah talked about sinners lives being “vessels that are marred”.  But he emphasized that the Potter does not throw the broken marred clay away.  He is gifted at taking those broken, marred, fragile clay pots and transforming them into beautiful and useful vessels again by the touch of the Potter.  (See Jeremiah 17).  Paul picked up on this theme when He talked of Salvation in Ephesians 2:8-10.  In verses 8-9 he states, “For by grace ye have been saved, through faith, not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works lest any man should boast”, But he doesn’t stop there.  Instead he says that those “saved by grace” are God’s “workmanship”.  That word is beautifully expressive.  It is the Greek word “poema”.  The word means a “piece of artwork”.  A poem; a sculpture; a picture; something created that reflects the nature and skill of its creator.  When our lives are formed, conformed, transformed by the hand of God we become His masterpieces.  Our new lives bring Him great glory.  As the heavens reflect the glory of God as His creation; so our transformed lives as “new creatures in Christ” bring Him glory.  C.S. Lewis understood this when he said that “It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which if you saw now would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.  All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations…immortal horrors or everlasting splendors” (Weight of Glory).

     If we have those three ingredients-eyes to focus; heart to feel; and hands to touch and form we can be co-laborers with our Savior in winning people to Him by the transforming Gospel.  Instead of listening to John Rylands tell us “God will do it without us”.  Let’s make ourselves available so that He can do it with us and through us.  Someone has said, “Without Him we can’t-Without us He won’t!”  The answer-We Can Do It Together! 

     Several years ago I heard Charles Swindoll tell the story of a mother who took her young child to hear Padereski, the famous Polish pianist that was performing at a black-tie affair.  She wanted her son to hear him perform so that he would be impressed with what he could become.  But he got weary of waiting and squirming restlessly in his seat.  While his mother was talking excitedly with the person seated to her other side-the boy disappeared.  Strangely drawn by the ebony concert grand sitting majestic and alone in the center of the stage-he made his way to it and sat down on the tufted leather stool, placed his small hands on the black and white keys and begin to play “chopsticks!”  The crowd reacted- “Get that boy away from there!”  “Where’s his mother?”  “Somebody stop him!”  Backstage Paderewski heard the uproar and the sound of the simple tune.  When he saw what was happening he hurriedly made his way to the stage, walked up behind the lad.  He reached his arms around him and began to improvise a countermelody.  As the two made music together the master pianist kept whispering “Don’t quit. Keep going”.  Together they made music that amazed the audience.  So with us!  With his touch together we can make a beautiful masterpiece!

PASTOR’S PERSPECTIVE:  MARK TWAIN-LINCOLN OF LITERATURE BUT SPIRITUAL SHIPWRECK?

     Everybody loves Mark Twain.  Every school boy and girl enjoyed reading The Adventures Tom Sawyer, and the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.  Both give us insight to what it was like growing up in Hannibal, Missouri in the mid 1800’s. The Family Encyclopedia of American History says, “if the 19^th Century American dream has a single literary laureate, it is Samuel Clemens, known by his pen name, Mark Twain”.   Literary critic Edgar Wagenknect concurred when he wrote, “Mark Twain is incomparably the dominating personality in American literature, the mightiest figure in American mythology”.  Ernest Hemingway, in The Green Hills of Africa asserted that, “Huckleberry Finn was both the first and best book in American Literature and Mark Twain began to be viewed as the writer’s writer”.  Likewise, William Faulkner told Japanese students that “Mark Twain was really the father of American Literature”. Longtime friend, and literary critic William Dean Howe, speaking at Twain’s funeral, said “Clemens was sole, incomparable, the Lincoln of Literature.”   Those comments affirm the greatness of Mark Twain.

     I was introduced to Twain in High School English literature, but really became familiar with him while attending college in his home town of Hannibal, Missouri.  Everyone who came to visit us asked us to take them to Mark Twain’s boyhood home, and of course to visit and tour the Mark Twain Cave.  Such exposure to those places enriched your life with the very things he wrote about, and made them literally come to life!  What most do not realize is that Mark Twain grew up in a very Christian home, and was saturated with the Christian faith, a faith he struggled greatly with, and was never really able to fully embrace.  His father, John Marshall Clemens, was a free thinker who never saw the necessity of embracing Christianity, until on his death bed, when asked by the Pastor, “do you believe in Christ, and trust His saving blood to save you?’ the elder Clemens responded, “I do!”  Twain’s mother, Jane Clemens, was a very involved Christian, who took her children religiously to Sunday School, first in the Methodist Church, and later to the Presbyterian Church in Hannibal.  She read the Bible to them daily and sought to share her faith with them, though her faith was characterized by the non-traditional habits of pipe-smoking, and dancing, with occasional ventures into odd forms of religion that was novel to the culture of Hannibal in the mid 1800’s.  Twain once claimed that “he knew the Bible well enough by two weeks old, to protest being named Samuel, after a boy whom the Lord had to call…a couple of times before he would come!”: (a reference to I Samuel 3:1-10). Twain illustrated what his Sunday School experience was like in chapter 4 of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.  Most commentators refer to Twain’s Sunday School indoctrination as an influence that proved unshakable for him to his dying day.  John Gerber asserted, “The Calvinistic doctrines of the depravity of man and predestination created an intellectual context from which he never escaped. Yet Samuel Clemens was never a believer in the orthodox sense.”

     Clemens fell in love with, and married his sweetheart, Olivia Langdon.  Olivia grew up in a Christian home, as was a dedicated Christian. Olivia had been an invalid, as a girl, and had been healed by a faith healer named Dr. Newton, which restored her to activity.  Aware of her faith, in a letter of proposal to her, Clemens assured her that if she married him their home would be a Christian home.  He wrote, “…Livy, we’ll model our home after your old home, and make the Spirit of Love lord over the entire realm…we will turn toward the Cross and be comforted-I turn with you-What would you have more? The Peace of God shall rest upon us and all will be well!” During that engagement time Twain was reading the Bible nightly and praying, as well as corresponding with his sweetheart over sermons that he had been reading.  When the couple first married, they read the Bible together, said grace at meals, and all seemed to be going as promised.  But the influence of his Pastor, Thomas Beecher, brother to Henry Ward Beecher, far more liberal than his famous brother, began to have a detrimental affect on Twain.  Twain began to doubt the faith he was raised in.  The atmosphere of their Christian home soon changed as he announced to Livy, “I don’t believe the Bible-it contradicts my reason!”  This reversal of his religious fervor began to show up in his writings.  Through the mouth of Tom Sawyer he said, “I…have got religion and wish to be quit of it and lead an honest life again!”  His biographer writes, the early years of engagement and marriage to Olivia Langdon, “he came the closet to making a real connection with genuine Christianity”.   His departure from his early faith began to take a toll on his wife.  On one occasion she said she no longer believed, and “That if he was going to hell, she wanted to go with him!” She modeled herself after her beloved husband, and began to “smoke and curse!”  He was amused at her efforts, and remarked that “she knew the words and lyrics, but not the melody!”   Later, when she was ill, and dying, he encouraged her to lean on her faith, and her response was “I no longer have any faith!” Twain never forgave himself of causing her to abandon her faith, because of him. He began to have terrifying dreams in which his family are lost in the dark aboard a ship with no pilot and rudder, as a result of his poor example leading them to abandon their faith.  Allison Ensor concluded, “I believe that the evidence shows that Twain’s orthodoxy reached it zenith late in 1868 and early 1869, and after that period he abandoned all penchant for Bible reading and hat-tipping in that direction”.  In 1878, while on a trip to Europe with a Pastor friend, Rev. Joseph Twitchell, Twain confessed, “I have been almost a believer, but it immediately drifts away from me again, I don’t believe a word of your Bible was inspired by God any more than any other book.”

   In spite of that confession, Twain often admitted that he could never get away from his “trained Presbyterian conscience!”

     Twain’s brother Henry was severely injured in an explosion on the steamboat Pennsylvania, a boat that Twain was supposed to be piloting that day, but had to ask Henry to fill in for him, due to unknown circumstances.  Twain sat by his bedside for six days nursing him after the explosion, until Henry died.  Twain wrote a letter to his brother Orion’s wife Millie, and revealed how broken he was over the accident.  He wrote, on June 21, 1858, “lost and ruined sinner that I am-I even, I have humbled myself to the ground, and prayed as never a man has prayed before, that the Great God might let this cup pass from me-the He would strike me to the earth, but spare my brother-that He would pour out the fulness of His just wrath on my wicked head, but have mercy, mercy, mercy upon that unoffending boy.  The horrors of these three days have swept over me-they have blasted my youth and left me an old man before my time. Mollie there are grey hairs in my head tonight. For forty-eight hours I have labored at the bedside of my poor burned and bruised, but uncomplaining brother, and then the star of my hope went out and left me in despair.  Then poor wretched me, that was once proud, was humbled to the very dust-for the vilest of beggars in the streets of St. Louis could never conceive a humiliation like mine.  Men take me by the hand and congratulate me, and call me lucky because I was not on the Pennsylvania when she blew up!  My God forgive them, for they know not what they say!”  Mark Twain, and his faith, continues to be a paradox to all who study him.  Winston Churchill called Russia, “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma”.  That is a good description of Mark Twain and his faith.

     Twain’s “trained Presbyterian conscience” showed up clearly in his writings.  His book The Prince and Pauper is beyond question an allegory about the Incarnation of Christ, and is a good commentary on Philippians 2:5-11.  His book The Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court continues that imagery.  Even Puddin’Head Wilson has subtle illustration of the Incarnation.  Of course, his Joan of Arc praises her as the greatest Christian ever to live, second only to Jesus Himself.  Twain’s objection to Christianity seems more about the failure of most Christians to live out a genuine faith.  He said, “If Christ were here today, the one thing he would not be is a Christian!” Mark Twain was the personification of wit and wisdom to his generation.  He famously shared the word, “better to be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt!”.  A bit of wisdom President Lincoln lived by, and repeated often.  He said, “I never rejoiced over anyone’s death, or wished someone dead, but I have often read certain obituaries with a smile.” One obituary he read with a smile might have been his own.  While touring Europe, to raise money for some financial burdens, it was rumored that he was in poor health, and near death.  It was actually true of his cousin James Rose Clemens.  When his cousin died, it was mistakenly reported by Frank Marshall White, of the New York Journal, that Twain had died.  Upon reading it Twain wrote Marshall and said, “The report of my demise has been greatly exaggerated!”. 

     In 1835 Haley’s comet made it periodic visit. Mark Twain arrived at the same time.  As the time of its return drew closer, in 1909Twain remarked, “It’s coming again next year, and the Almighty has said n doubt, these two unaccountable freaks came in together, they must go out together!” His words were very prophetic, for on April 21, 1910, the report of his demise was this time accurate, and the world lost the Lincoln of Literature, and their author that no one saw a in freak.  James Hefley, Christian author, and later the Professor of Writing at Hannibal-LaGrange College, in Twain’s home town of Hannibal wrote many articles of the impact of Twain.  In his article The Wit and Tragedy of Mark Twain, detailed how if Twain had embraced the Christian faith with his heart instead of his head, he would have found the secret to making his faith genuine.  Had he done that he might have had a spiritual impact on his world not unlike his contemporary William Jennings Bryan.  He writes that Twain had a clear understanding of the doctrine of the new birth, and salvation by grace, that he was taught by his mother in life, and his father on his death bed, but ne never, as far as we can be sure, ever embraced it personally for himself. To his dying day, though he doubted at times the reality of heaven, he never questions the reality of hell and feared many, himself included, might experience that tragedy when he died.

     His later years, after losing Livy, and his children, Twain wrote in his autobiography, published only after his death, by his own wishes, these depressing pessimistic words: “A myriad of men are born; they labor and struggle and sweat for bread; they squabble and scold and fight; they scramble for little mean advantages over each other.  Age creeps upon them and infirmities follow; shame and humiliation bring down their pride and vanities.  Those that they love are taken from them, and the joy of life is turned into an aching grief.  The burden of pain, care, and misery grows heavier year by year. At length ambition is dead; longing for relief takes its place.  It comes at last, the only unpoisioned gift earth has for them-and they vanish away from a world where they achieved nothing, where they were of no consequence, where they were a mistake, and a failure and a foolishness; where they left no sign they ever existed-a world that will lament them for a day, and forget them forever!”

     On his last trip to Europe his itinerary had him meeting nearly every dignitary of Europe.  After meeting the Chancellor of Germany, his daughter Jean was so impressed with her famous father that she said, “Papa if this keeps up there won’t be anybody else for you to meet except God!”  He certain had every opportunity to do so with all of his exposure to the Christian faith.  It would be a real American tragedy if he never did.  Perhaps he, like his father, on his own death bed, finally had a change of heart, and like he promised Livy, made his way to the cross he often talked about, and found the peace of God that seemed to allude him.  One never knows.  His pen name-Mark Twain, was the most important call to be heard on a steamboat.  If mean that the water was deep enough to avoid being shipwrecked on the river.  It would be a real tragedy to be so named and end up making a shipwreck of his own faith.  This American Lincoln of Literature gives us the ultimate lesson not just for his 19^th century, but for the new millennium of the 21^st century as well! Mark Twain!SERMON: EMPTY TOMB…THE EVIDENCE OF TRIUMPH

                                         I Corinthians 15:1-19

                                         “If Christ Be NOT RISEN”….

                    I.   OUR PREACHING IS PREPOSTEROUS.

                    II.  OUR FAITH IS A FARCE

                    III. OUR TRUTH IS IN TATTERS.