Last But Not Least!
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As I was thinking about what I would preach on for my last sermon at Faith Church, I immediately thought of Dave’s Final Ten; but, please don’t worry… But, I did come up with five. I had it down to three, but it just didn’t work. I could probably do ten or fifteen but these are the five I came up with. So, these are Chris’s Five Encouragements to you.
Some Scripture for you from Ephesians. This is a wonderful prayer you will find in the third chapter which I think is a prayer we should all pray from time to time; but on this day, it is my prayer for you and for myself. (Ephesians 3:14-21)
14 For this reason I kneel before the Father, 15 from whom every family[a] in heaven and on earth derives its name. 16 I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
20 Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.
Let’s pray together.
Lord, thank you for this prayer that serves as a guide to us. Would you pray for these things that we may know how great you are and how much you love us? We do praise you. For all our lives and our salvation and our eternal life to come, we give you honor, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Well, first and foremost I would like to just say, it is all about JESUS. Now we might say, “Well, that’s pretty obvious. Isn’t that what the Church is all about?” Well, it is, in lots of ways; but what I would like to do is simply encourage you to be strong, to keep on keeping on with what you already are for you are a Christ-centered church and we need to be Christ-centered because there is all kinds of temptation in the world to not be Christ-centered. It is popular to be something else. That something else, we know what it is; it is the idea that “Oh, all gods are the same. Jesus is just one of the prophets, like any other prophet.”
I was interested that the actor who plays Aslan in The Narnia Chronicles, Liam Neeson, said this. He said, “Aslan symbolizes a Christ-like figure but he also symbolizes for me, Mohammed, Buddha, and all the great spiritual leaders and prophets over the centuries.” Now I asked myself when I first heard this, “Is this just another actor being stupid?” Because, if you know anything about C.S. Lewis at all, he said very directly that Aslan, who is the lion, the Lion of the tribe of Judah if you will, is Jesus, is Jesus. But I asked myself about this actor and I said he probably isn’t. He is just reflecting what the world believes because it is very popular to think it is all the same.
So, we must be diligent because it sounds nice. After all, we are accused of creating wars and all kinds of strife because we believe in Jesus, and Jesus is the Way; but we have to in love, and have to in a diligent way, and keep on keep on keeping on just as nice as we can be and say “It is Jesus that is what it’s about.” Even in the Church we have to be diligent. Just in the last few years a professor in a Presbyterian seminary wrote a book or a pamphlet that asked a question “What’s the big deal about Jesus?” And he said basically, not much. That attitude is out there. It is expressed some ways that we need to be God-centered and not Christ-centered. Well, that sounds nice except in the Bible, to be God-centered is to be Christ-centered and to be Christ-centered is to be God-centered. After all, what is the New Testament all about? I would argue the whole Bible, but just take the New Testament. Who is it about? Well it starts with Jesus. It ends with Jesus. And Jesus is all the way through; in fact, God the Father is one of the biggest cheerleaders of Jesus. “This is my Son, with whom I am well pleased. Listen to him.” “…it is my will that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in Him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.” (John 6:40)
It is all about Jesus. Be what you are, a Christ-centered Church. Be diligent. Stay that way.
The second point is that our FATHER is in charge. We say that all over the Bible. You know Presbyterians are often accused of having a mechanical view of God, because we are accused of being predestinarian. That is probably an accurate charge. It is kind of like that old joke, you know, if you are in a group of mixed company of Christians, something will happen and someone with inevitably say, if you are Presbyterian, “Oh, that was predestined to happen.” I have heard that so many times. It is kind of like the old joke of a couple pastors who were great friends, one was a Presbyterian and the other was a Free Will Baptist and they would just have knock-down-drag-out fights about predestination and free will all the time. One day the Presbyterian fell down a flight of stairs and ended in a heap at the bottom. His friend walked up to him and said, “Hmmm, I’m sure you are glad to have that one behind you, aren’t you?”
But, you know, we don’t believe in a puppet master God. We believe in God who is Father, who is personal, who loves us as his children and who is in charge of our lives. That is what predestination is. It is another discussion, but it really is just the idea that God is sovereign. God is in charge but he is also our Father. He is not impersonal. It isn’t just this mechanical thing, somebody sitting up there running the show that we don’t know. And our job is to trust him.
I love this passage that I would like to read to you briefly, by one of my favorite storytellers, and that is Max Lucado. He is telling the story about a time his daughter wants to jump off her bed. It goes like this, he says, “I stand six steps from the bed’s edge, my arms extended. On the bed, Sarah, all four years of her, crouches poised like a playful kitten. She is going to jump; but she is not ready. I am too close. ‘Back more, daddy,’ she stands and dares. I dramatically comply, confessing in admiration for her courage. After two giant steps I stop, ‘More?’ I ask. ‘Yes’ Sarah squeals, hopping on the bed. With each step she laughs and claps and motions for more. When I am on the other side of the canyon, when I am beyond the reach of mortal man, when I am a tiny figure on the horizon, she stops me. ‘There. Stop there.’ ‘Are you sure?’ ‘I am sure’ she shouts. I extend my arms, once again she couches then springs— Superman without a cape, skydiver without a chute— only her heart flies higher than her body. In that airborne instant, her only hope is in her father. If he proves weak, she will fall. If he proves cruel, she will crash. If he proves forgetful, she will stumble hard on the floor. But such fear she does not know; for her father, she does. She trusts him. Four years under the same roof has convinced her that he is reliable. He is not Superman, but he is strong. He is not holy, but he is good. He is not brilliant, but he doesn’t have to be to remember to catch his child when she jumps. So she flies and so she soars and so he catches her. And the two rejoice at the wedding of trust and faithfulness.”
Now Lucado goes on and says, “Yes, of course, life is hard. It is full of cancers and wars and job losses and people shooting other people (like yesterday). It is full of things like that but God is still Father. God is still Father.”
No I know it is poor English to string a bunch of modifiers together; but I would have added more if I could, because Grace really is AMAZING. Grace is utterly amazing. The famous passage – you should memorize it – “For it is by grace that you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9) Most of us have probably seen the movie Saving Private Ryan and you remember the scene with the captain played by Tom Hanks as he lays dying and he looks up to Private Ryan and says “earn this, earn this death.” Isn’t the world like that? In every case we have to earn it. We have to earn trust, time and again. We have to prove our worth, time and again. We have to earn it over and over again. And there is something right and good about that, but not with God; not with his salvation. See we can’t earn it. We don’t deserve it and it truly is amazing. Now in my preaching over the years I have taken issue with the modern understanding of grace which I think is mostly wrong. You have heard it. “Well God just accepts me the way I am.” But does he? I have made a distinction, and wording is real important here. God doesn’t accept us the way you are. He doesn’t accept you the way you are. He accepts you for who you are. Huge difference. Now let’s think about it logically just for a minute. Now, you obviously know that I have the cutest grandchild in the entire world. Now those of you who are grandparents I ask for your forgiveness. I’m jaded. It’s all that…. I know you think the same of yours, and rightly so. But, of course, Jake, you know Jake, Jake runs around here. He is two now and knows the word No really well. As a matter of fact, I will say to him, “Jake, you know, do you want to say “yes”? “No.” …Just to test him a little bit; it’s cute. But, you know, we have all had our children, not all of us, but a lot of us, and grandchildren. We have watched them grow up and those cute “nos” at two become defiant, angry “nos” at sixteen. Stupid “nos” at seventeen. Really idiotic “nos” at eighteen. We have seen it happen; and, in some cases, our children do things that absolutely hurt us to no end. And we do too, of course. But we still take them back. We still love them. We don’t kick them out in the snow even when they are teenagers and we are tempted. When they go off and do things that harm them forever, maybe, we will still take them back, like the Prodigal son, or the daughter. We will take them back because they are our children. We don’t love them for what they do; we love them for who they are. And that is grace, that’s grace. God does the same for us and God does not just accept our behavior. And as a Church we have to remember that because sometimes we are tempted to say, “Well, I am a sinner, I can’t say that anything is wrong out there.” Well that is part of our job, to stand firm against some of the immorality out there in the world. Who else is going to do it? Who else?
Which leads to the second point. I have said this very often. God does not DRIVE a parked car. I am using the second part of this verse — you know Ephesians 2:8 and 9, and this is 10. We forget about 10. You should memorize that one, too, because you know what? You want to know what your purpose is in life; there it is in a nutshell. “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” (Ephesians 2:10) There is that predestination thing. I won’t talk about that. But it is there. We are God’s workmanship created to do good works. That is what we are supposed to do. We are not supposed to sit around and look around and enjoy the ride, or be parked. You know, if you really want your life in God to be close and personal, you need to turn on the key. It isn’t just about coming on Sunday and having Monday being the same as it always is. It isn’t just about being entertained, because God wants us to be worked. I am not saying that is easy either, because God will take you and then start changing you a little bit. When you are his servant he will start molding you and bending you, just like the airplane.
Another wonderful passage by Joni Eareckson who talks about how she was having dinner one day with a friend. Joni is a person who is paralyzed mostly from the neck down from a diving accident. Her friend had to take one of her good spoons and bend it in a special way for Joni to be able to eat because she can use a little bit of one of her arms and she has to have it bent in the right way. She said “I’m sorry that has to happen,” but her friend thought it was an honor for her to do that. Here was an instrument that had to be bent in just the right way to be used and God does that to us. God does that to us. And that is why a lot of people just sit in the car. They do not want to go through problems; but if you are in God’s service, you will. But that is what our purpose is. It isn’t meant to be easy but it is meant to be good.
To go along with that, number 5, last but not least is that we are STEWARDS, literally, of everything. You know, when I was younger and I first got married, I had a car that my father owned. I called it my car but— as I have sometimes reminded my children that I own the car— but he owned the car and I drove it. I got married and we moved to Philadelphia and I wanted to sell the car because we had another one. So I sold it. But the lady said, “Where is the title?” I literally didn’t know what a title was. Literally didn’t know what it was! “What?” “Oh-oh.” I called my dad, “What’s a title, Dad?” “Oh, it is something that means I own the car. Well I sold it.” “O.K.” It turned out O.K. Now in the human world we have titles of ownership. But who owns your title? Obvious answer: God does. I have said that a hundred times here and I say it all the time. I say it to myself. I remind myself of it. I don’t own myself. I don’t own anything, in the end. We arrive in the world. It was here before we got here. We had nothing to do with that and it will still be here after we are gone. We use it a while and we leave. We appear before God and he says, “What did you do with your life? I own it, after all.” I was reminded of that many years ago very powerfully as I was watching my children one day and I was thinking about my children. It wasn’t a voice, but just kind of a thought that came into my head, “Their mine. Those children are mine. You are just a steward of them.”
That is our purpose as parents is for them to come to know their Lord and go out on their own. Now in some sense because I am a steward of them and that doesn’t end I found out, you know what I mean. It doesn’t end and that is O.K. It really is O.K. but it is the stewardship that changes over time. We are stewards of everything. And my message to you today, because we see this Scripture in one way or another all over the place, that we appear before God and if we are faithful in being good stewards we share the Master’s happiness. And that includes this church. You know, it is tempting for people in our modern world to think of everything kind of like Walmart. If we don’t like one thing, we go and buy it at Target. Or we go to Sears, or wherever. Church is not like that. Now we do have the choice of going to one church or another but if you are a member of a church you are a steward of it. So I would just ask you not to wait and see what happens. Don’t wait for a year and a half because that is probably what it will take to find a new pastor, to see what that person is like before you get involved. Get involved. This church needs everybody—everybody’s heart and soul and money and help. This is your church because you are stewards of it. It is God’s church but it also your church. Pastors are stewards too, for a while; we are temporary. No matter if we are here for one year or thirty, we come and we go. It is what it is. It is a funny life as a pastor. You kind of come in for a while and you make friends and then you have to rip that fabric up and you have to leave and go to another place. It is difficult. I don’t like it much. But it is your church. It is God’s church.
So, I am encouraging you to be here, be committed to it, to this particular body. We will see each other again in the Kingdom. And I will be around, my family will be around. But this isn’t the end because one day we will gather up in the clouds, or wherever, and we will be singing praises to God and doing something else. But right now, we are here. We are God’s workmanship, God’s children, God’s called people, God’s stewards and God’s Church.
Would you pray with me?
Lord I do thank you for this church and I pray for it. I can’t say much more than what Paul has already said, that we would grasp how wide and how long and how deep is your love for us. Now Lord be with us as we partake of the communion and the grace of that, in Jesus’ name. Amen.