Up Against the Wall
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Up Against the Wall
April 24, 2011
by Rev. William “Buck” Day
We now turn to God’s word. We have three Scriptures, one from John, one from Luke and one from Matthew, on this Easter Sunday. So I invite you to follow along as I read them here before us.
First from John: (John 11:25)
Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live…’
Then from Luke: (Luke 11:9)
‘So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.’
Then from Matthew: (Matthew 28:20)
“…and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always till the end of the age.”
God’s word for us once again. Would you pray with me?
Lord God, thank you. Thank you for your word, the richness of it, the way that it speaks to our hearts. Lord we ask that your Holy Spirit would help us to hear what you have for us this day. We ask it in Christ’s name. Amen.
Well we are talking about walls today and I wanted to start with some pictures of some walls and see if we can identify them. First one, does anyone know what that is? It is the Great Wall of China, isn’t it? That’s right. This wall is over 400 miles long, took over a hundred years to build, and do you know what is wrong with it? It didn’t do what it was intended to do. It was intended to keep the invading forces out. It didn’t do that. One other thing I should say, what country is this in? “China.” O.K. I was just checking. So,…one of the walls that we know about.
Here is another one. Does anyone know what this wall was? It was the Berlin wall, it was the Berlin wall. It was designed to keep the West out of the East and the East from escaping to the West. The day it came down in November of 1989 was an amazing day. You saw the pictures on T.V. It was an incredible time for freedom around the world. One of the things that happened that day was that many people carried away pieces of the wall. I actually have a piece here that was given to me many years ago; and it is a great symbol of what God has done in our world bringing about his world and his kingdom.
Well these are walls that you can see. We have walls that we can see in our lives. They are the walls in our home, the walls in this building, perhaps flood walls that we have seen lately. Those are walls that we can see, but there are also walls in our lives that we cannot see. They are just as real as any physical wall we come up against and they are just as disruptive. You have heard the phrase “I feel like I am up against the wall.” That is what we are talking about today—those non-physical walls that are in our lives, those times that we run into a wall and we can’t seem to get over them; we almost get stuck. As hard as we try, we just simply can not get over them. So I am going to show you a video. Tell me is this is how you feel when you are stuck against one of those walls.
(video of man trying to get over a wall but cannot succeed.)
Do you ever feel like that when you are up against a wall? We all run into walls in our lives. Sometimes we can get over them but sometimes we never do. So my question is, what do those walls look like in our lives? If they are not physical, then what are we talking about here? What do they look like that we run into that can be just as daunting? Well one of the walls I think we run into can sometimes be called a Vocational Wall. How many times have you heard someone say, perhaps you have even said it yourself, “I am in a dead end job, it is going nowhere. I feel like I am stuck here.” Or, “I don’t like this job, but I need it to pay the bills so I have to keep trudging along.” Or maybe you feel like you are working just to simply make your boss look better and you are not getting any of the credit. Or maybe you have been chasing that golden ring by trying to add more money to the bottom line of the company; and you are doing a lot more chasing than you are grabbing for the ring. You are up against a vocational wall and sometimes that wall can crush you and for many people it has, in fact. But beyond that, with the downturn in economy, many of us are struggling to even have a job. You have lost your job and, despite all of your best efforts, you can’t seem to find another one. You know that if you lost your job, life doesn’t stop in the midst of job loss; there is still a mortgage to pay; there is still gas and there is still food to buy; there are needs that your kids have. All of that stuff continues. I want you to listen to a friend of mine named John who has been up against this wall for too long.
(Video)
My name is John and I have been struggling with unemployment now for almost three years. I have thirty plus years of experience in full-time church ministry, corporate training, conference design, sales, and professional writing. My last job ended in 2008 and I have not found steady work since then. I honestly never imagined myself in this situation. I thought I would always have a job because I am a decent guy. I treat other people well. I get along well with people. I work hard and I try to make a contribution and make a difference with my efforts; but the reality is, the reality that I am seeing now, is I am a 56 year old guy with a lot of good experience but I haven’t kept up with the advances in technology business resources that many of my younger colleagues take for granted. Fortunately I have a very loving and supportive wife who has a full-time job. We have a very strong, active, solid faith in God and we know that he will not abandon us, although sometimes I wonder what he is waiting for. But, I struggle, I struggle to keep hope active because this has been long enough now that I don’t see it like I did a year or two ago as a temporary glitch. Sometimes I see it as my new reality and that is difficult. I am at this point where I am waiting for something to break loose here.
(End of video)
It is a tough wall and some of you may actually be against that wall this morning. And if you are, I want you to know that the risen Christ has words for you this morning, as well.
Some of us are able to get past that vocational wall but the wall we run into is called the Relational Wall. This wall has the great potential to cause harm because it is so close to our hearts, because usually it involves our families, our marriages; and this wall also comes in many different forms. Perhaps you are single and you have been wanting to get married and start a family but you can’t seem to find that right gal or guy. You spend more money than you would like to on places like eHarmony, hoping that they will mine some prospects but it begins to wear on you after a while. You think, if I could just get married it would solve all of my problems. But marriage is not always the nirvana that couples hope it will be. Some of you couples know exactly what I am talking about, that you are sharing a roof but not much else and you are wondering, is this as good as it gets? Is this all there is to marriage? Some couples struggle with infertility. As hard as they would love to have a child, they just can’t seem to conceive, and, so nothing helps. Over a while that struggle begins to erode to the point that they blame each other and that can be where things so south very quickly. And those of us who do have kids know how easy it is for a child to break our heart, don’t we? And in that our relational wall can come crashing down. A few bad decisions during their high school or adolescence or college days can put stresses on a relationship that are very hard to overcome. A DWI or a drug arrest can be a relational wall we just simply don’t get over. So if you are stuck against the wall over relationships, some aspect of it in your life, and you are wondering, what is up with this? I want you to know that the risen Christ has words for you today, as well.
You just got news from the doctor that he sees something that concerns him and your family has a history of cancer. Your blood pressure has just spiked because the phone is ringing in the middle of the night and there has been an accident. Or you hear of a close friend who has died suddenly. You are up against the Wall of what might be called Grief and Disappointment. The death of a loved one is difficult even when it is expected. Just recently there was a story in the news of two fourteen-year-old girls in southern Minnesota, in Marshall, who committed suicide. You see they were up against a relational wall trying to deal with friends who were being hard on them. The parents now are up against the wall of grief and disappointment because they are trying to understand how they missed the signs that they now see so clearly. So if you are up against the wall of grief and disappointment, Jesus has words for you today, as well.
There are lots of other walls we could talk about but there is one other that we need to talk about. And it is called the Mortality Wall. It is the highest wall that you will ever face and it is one that you cannot escape. Sooner or later every one of us will be up against the mortality wall. The last time I checked the mortality rate for humans was still hovering about 100%. Most of us at some point in our lives have wondered: What is on the other side of that wall? What is on the other side? Scripture is crystal clear on what is on the other side of the mortality wall. In Hebrews 9:27 it says, “…it is appointed for men and women to die once.” And I would add parenthetically, (so much for the ideas of reincarnation). Then it says, “…there comes a day of reckoning.” Let me say this as plainly as I can today that we are all going to die someday. When we do we will stand before God for a day of reckoning. The best way that I know to prepare for that day is to get to know the one person that has broken through the mortality wall, who is alive and resurrected; and, that is, Jesus Christ, God’s Son. Jesus died for my sins, to make me right before God. In doing that that is a gift of God’s mercy to me and to each of us. That gift of God’s mercy is available for each of us, not because of what we do but rather because of what Christ has done for us.
Another book of the Bible, called Titus, says it crystal clear. It says, “Not by works of righteousness that you have done but according to his mercies he saved us.” Jesus “is the resurrection and the life” we read in our Scripture. In Christ’s resurrection he has broken through that mortality wall and gives us the gift of the resurrection, not just for when we die, but a gift for us today, right now. That gift of the resurrection is a gift of eternal life that can begin right now. It is available to us right here, right now. So what does that kind of eternal life lived out in the present tense look like in our lives? How does it show itself? Well one way to think about that is start by picking the wall that you are up against right now, whatever wall that might be—whether it is a vocational wall, a financial wall, a relational wall, a marriage, kids, pain, disappointment, grief, anger, whatever wall it is that you are up against—because the wall that you are up against right now, you don’t have to face alone. Because eternal life starts now, Jesus will be your companion when you face that wall. Through the presence of the Holy Spirit within you, he will do some things to help you as you go against that wall, whatever wall it is this morning that you are struggling with.
One of the things the risen Christ will do for you is he will give you perspective as you face your wall. The perspective starts with understanding that the wall that you face, whatever wall it is, is not an eternal wall. It will come down at some point, just as the Berlin wall did. It is a temporary wall. In my own life I faced a vocational wall before and I have also faced a relational wall and I faced a wall of disappointment, as well. As I faced those walls in my own life, I thought: “Man these are huge walls. There is no way I am going to get over them. I am stuck here.” But it was in those times that the Holy Spirit would remind me, “Buck, remember, I resolved the only eternal problem that you have and I have helped you over other walls before. Why won’t I do that again?” The walls that you are facing right now will not last forever; but keep it in perspective. When you are up against the wall I want to encourage you not to let that wall become bigger than it really is. Counselors call it catastrophizing the event. Don’t make it so big that it becomes a catastrophe in your own mind. Ask yourself who is bigger than the wall you are up against. Whose side is he on? Keep some perspective as you face the wall that you are up against this morning.
There is another thing about living eternally right now. Another one of the things that the risen Christ does for us is he gives us God’s resources to help us when we are up against the wall. Not only does God have all the resources we need, perhaps more importantly, he has the heart to do them. Jesus said, as our Scripture said, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you.” You see our God wants to help you in your wall. He can help in ways that we can never imagine, in ways that we don’t know. I am going to give you an opportunity to ask in a few moments.
The risen Christ also promises his presence as we face our walls. Jesus says in our last Scripture, “I am with you always till the end of the age.” That is a long time and that is a strong prophecy. But that is our Christ. He will be with you when you feel like you are alone against that wall. We all know how good it is to have friends around us when we are going through hard times. Jesus is saying “I am with you. I’ve got your back. I will be with you. You don’t have to go it alone.” So living an eternal life with Christ starts now. He brings into our lives perspective, resources, and presence.
So to that end, I want to ask you to do something for me. It starts with deciding. If the risen Christ has paid for your sins, if you have asked him to be the leader of your life, and if you want to begin that kind of eternal life right now, right here, it is a decision that I can’t make for you; your spouse cannot make for you; your parents can not make for you. It is a decision that you need to make for yourself. If you have settled that between you and God, then I want you to act on that. I want you to ask God to act on your behalf. Here is how I would like you to do that.
In the bulletin you received a blue prayer sheet. What I would like you to do is I would like you to fill this out. What I would like you to do is just put your name on it, just put your first name, nothing more, and then I want you put what is it that you need prayer for? What is the wall that you are up against today? Just keep it short. Something like, I would like to find a spouse, or I would love to help my marriage be better, or I would love to get a job, or I would love to just talk to my kids again. Whatever it might be, I want you to fill that out. Because if you are willing, what I would like you to do when you leave in just a few moments, there will be baskets that the ushers will have in the back and I would like you to just drop your request in that basket as you leave; for there are people here at Faith who are going to pray for your prayer request by your name each day for the next thirty days. We have a number of volunteers who are willing to hold your request before the very throne of God. If you are humble enough to ask, to seek and to knock, I believe that God has the power that will be released to help you over whatever wall you are facing today.
If you are still up against the mortality wall— you haven’t settled that thing between Christ and you about him being Lord of your life— then I want to invite you to put that on your prayer card, instead. Put down: I would pray that God would show himself as faithful to you, faithful so that you could put your trust in him. And if you do that, I would invite you to tell somebody in your life that you have done that. For Jesus was resurrected from the dead, God raised him. In doing so he broke through the mortality wall so that we can enter the very presence of God as beloved children, for God loves each one of us and desires to call us his own and that happens when we put our faith in the risen Savior. And to that on this Easter morning, I say Hallelujah! Christ has risen, indeed! Amen. Amen.
Let’s pray.
Mighty and Holy God thank you that you have, in fact, broken through the mortality wall; and, that because of that, we can live an eternal life that starts right here and right now. And Lord I pray for all of us who are up against the wall right now. I would ask that you would help us get over that wall, for you and you alone have the power and the desire to do that for us. So Lord we ask that you would act on our behalf just as you acted on behalf of all humankind when you rose Jesus from the dead. Thank you, mighty God. Thank you, Holy One. Amen.