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Recovering a Spirit of Holiness
A sermon by Rev. Jim
Pardue, interim preacher
First Baptist Church, Richmond, Virginia
Sunday, January 20, 2008
People like to make lists. How much money people make. Who won the latest
award at the Oscar night. Who is able to get elected to the political office.
We always love to make lists. And because the Bible knows that we react
positively to lists, there are a lot of lists in the Bible.
I
want you to take your Bible and turn to the book of Hebrews, Chapter 12. In
Chapter 11 are all the positive people of faith. There’s mention of Abraham,
there’s Moses, there’s Noah, all of these who should be examples for us all of
our life. But when you turn to Hebrews Chapter 12, in all of these times of
pointing to heroes, there’s one black spot on the horizon.
How
would you like to have your name mentioned for thousands of years because of a
sin in your life? That’s what happened to a man by the name of Esau. Let me
read you, beginning at verse 16 of Chapter 12.
“See
that no one is sexually immoral or is godless or profane like Esau, who for a
single meal sold his inheritance right as the oldest son. Afterwards, as you
know, when he wanted to inherit this blessing, he was rejected. He could bring
about no change of mind though he sought the blessing with tears.”
In
the near east parts of the world, the oldest son is the place of honor. The
oldest son is the one to whom all of the resources of his inheritance are going
to come to him. He’s going to carry the family name. He’s going to carry the
family honor.
A man
in this family was named Esau. Esau had a father by the name of Isaac and he
was all groomed to become the number one man in the family. He was a great
hunter. He liked to go out every day hunting. He had a brother by the name of
Jacob. And Jacob was so jealous and so angry because of the way the customs
were that one day he met him as he was coming back in after hunting all day
long. He said to him, “I knew you would be hungry. I fixed this bowl of
special soup. I’ll give it to you on one condition. You give me all of the
honors of being firstborn.”
The
Bible says Esau thought for a while and then he said, “This is my inheritance.
It may not happen for another twenty years.” He said, “I may be dead by then.
What good is it to have an inheritance if you don’t know you are going to get
it?” And so he said, “Give me the bowl of soup” and then he turned and he said,
“Here, I give you my inheritance.”
When
the Bible then talks about a man who failed, they pick out the sin of a man who
is willing to sell his birthright for a mess of soup. The word that they use is
the word “profane.” Profane means you take something that’s special, important,
wonderful, and you diminish it so that you can control it and you can make fun
out of it, and you can be in charge of it instead of it being in charge of
you.
People have told the story of a group of American tourists who were traveling in
Greece. While they were traveling there, they had the opportunity to go up to
an ancient monastery in the mountains of Greece. One of the priests took them
all around, showed them this ancient building, and finally said, “I want to take
you to a very special spot.” He took them into a room that had no windows and
in the middle of the room, there was a flame that was going up. The priest
said, “This is our holy flame. The flame has been burning now for over two
centuries. And every day and every night, we priests come to make sure the
flame is burning.”
In
the back, there was a man, unfortunately, who happened to be from the United
States. He said, “Let me get this straight. You mean to tell me that you
fellows have dedicated yourself to God and a part of your dedication is you keep
a flame burning which indicates your prayer’s going up to him, and you work day
and night keeping this flame going?” He said, “Yes sir, that is true.” And
just about that moment, all of them heard a puff. And then he said, “It’s out
now, buddy.”
Some
people have said that’s a parable of western culture. That what we are doing
today is blowing out holy flames. People laugh at things that used to be of
prime importance in our society’s life, always making fun about it, and taking
things of value and putting them aside.
Now,
I think it is very important for all of us to understand that when God tried to
teach us how to live, the thing that he emphasized the most was that we would
not be profane. Now, think about all the lists of sins and think that God
picked out one and said, “This one I want you to get right, because if you don’t
get this one right, it’s going to infect all of your life.” That is the reason
that when God put humans in the Garden of Eden, he said, “Everything here is
yours. But there is an invisible line that goes here. It’s a barrier. Don’t
ever go across it. Don’t ever take the fruit off of this vine. If you do, you
are going to perish.”
What
God wanted to teach in the very first of the Bible is to make sure that you have
a sense of respect. There is something so important and so holy to God, you just
can’t run over it and claim you are in charge. That’s the reason when God gave
us the Ten Commandments, you will notice all the way through them this sense of
having a sense of awe and wonder. Thou shall have no other Gods before me. You
shall not take the name of the Lord in a profane way. You are to honor your
father and your mother. You are not to violate what a person has so you don’t
break in and steal. You respect another person’s life so you don’t kill them.
You respect another person’s marriage and you don’t try to break it up.
All
the way through the Bible, God is trying to teach us the importance that we do
not live a profane life. That is the reason when later he had a temple built,
he said, “Now the priests come here, but there is a section here that is called
the holy of holies.” Only the high priests could go in once a year. It was the
holy place to God. From the very beginning he wanted to teach them that they
were not to be profane.
I
walked to the pulpit today with a book. This book, some parts of it, are
estimated to be nearly 5,000 years old. You know what’s on the front of my
book? It says Book, that’s what the word Bible means. But it says Holy Book.
You treat it with respect, you listen to what it says. God wants us to come in
a spirit of humility and say, “Lord, I don’t have all the answers and it’s very
easy for me to break all the commandments, so today I come back to the book and
I am reminded of what it should be.”
Now a
word that comes out of the word that we’ve mentioned today. The word profane
means to say words, jump over barriers, but the word that has come out of it is
the word profanity. Isn’t it amazing that people would talk of other people as
though they were only body parts? Or their bodily functions? Of all the things
you can say about a person, you talk about how his body works. You talk about
parts of his body and what you are doing is just diminishing him.
The
Bible also says in that word profane is the word pornography. Porno means
prostitute; graphy means writing. And what it means is pornography is the
writing of a prostitute. Grown men will spend thousands of dollars buying
pornography that does nothing but diminish a person. Is it any wonder if you
spend your life profane with words and profanity with attitude that so often
that you cannot relate properly to another person, especially in a marriage
relationship?
I
began to learn part of that in my own life. I was raised in Louisiana – my
father was a minister and the church that we attended was a church that had over
300 teenagers attending. It began to grow so much that our pastor said that he
thought the teenagers ought to have their own service. We would sing solos,
choirs, all of the things, give testimonies, and part of it was that I was one
of the ones who had to hand out the Lord’s Supper. Now we have handed it out to
300 teenagers, we have taken the cups back, we’ve set them down, and there are
some that are not used. Now all of us know that the Lord’s Supper is about is
the death of the Lord Christ on the cross for our sins. In fact, our very life
and eternity depends upon that cross. We’ve just celebrated it, we’ve just
stood in awe before him. And we’ve got some juice left in the cups. So we just
started drinking it. Then we got to laughing. And our youth pastor came in and
saw the supposedly intelligent, grown up teenagers back in the kitchen laughing
over drinking the juice left from the Lord’s Supper. And Bill said, “Would you
all come in here, please?” And I will always remember the pastor explaining to
me what the Lord’s Supper was and don’t spend your life laughing at it. But you
see, that’s what all of this is about.
We
went up several years ago to Gettysburg. We were with a large group and the
guide from the National Park Service was taking us out. And it just happened to
me, could have been two men, but it happened to be two women, standing in the
middle of Gettysburg and one of them said something and the other laughed. The
man who was from the Park Service held up his hand and said, “Would everybody
please get quiet?” He took his hat off and put over his chest and then he said,
“Listen, this is a cemetery – thousands of men died for what they believed on
both sides. Don’t you dare stand on this ground and laugh!” And he said, “If
you cannot abide by my rules, please leave now.”
You
know what I have learned from these experiences and a million more I could tell
you? Sometimes, somebody needs to yell at us. And sometimes people need to
say, “Some things are more important than you make them.”
I was
down in Florida last year. A man walked out of a 7-11 store and a man who was
blind happened to be seated there, begging for some food. And a man walked up
to him, took a gun out, and blew his brains out. In the paper, the Chief of
Police said, “I am not surprised. He didn’t respect anybody.”
When
you make fun of how people are constructed, when you make fun of how people do,
if you lose a sense of what people have done, then you need to hear the word of
God today. The word of God is “Esau was a profane man.”
I
have counseled a lot of people who were getting ready to get married. I have a
question I ask them. I say, “Do you have any problems that would create problems
later on in your relationship?” A girl turned to me and she said, “There’s one
with my husband. He cusses all the time.” And I said to him, “Is that a
problem? I don’t know what the problem is.” I said, “Suppose you come home from
work every day and what your wife is going to hear… 50% of your vocabulary is
profanity. What is this going to do to a relationship? When you make fun of
how she’s built, and how you do in your married life, and you laugh at her?”
One
of the phone calls I made months later was that young man called me up and said,
“I think I’m ready to get married. I wanted you to know, Pastor, I went all day
and realized I had not said one cuss word.” I said, “I think you are ready.”
Esau
was a profane man. Put big lights over it. One thing in the Bible that it says,
“Do not be profane.”
Let
me close by saying if you do you are going to become one-dimensional. You are
going to amount to nothing. C.S. Lewis has been considered the greatest
American writer. In 1947, he wrote a book entitled, “Men without Chests.” He
said “When God made you, he put you in three parts. He made you with a brain –
that’s your reasoning, he made you with a gut – that’s how you feel, and he gave
you a heart or a chest and that’s how you put values on things.
In
1947, the leading religious writer already understood that American culture and
Western culture was changing. We had become people without chests. No sense of
values at all. It will destroy you. It will destroy you in your relationship
with others. And it will destroy you in your relationship to God.
I
took one of those tours in Vienna, Austria. Those of you who have taken the
tour remember that they take you in a house where Beethoven lived, and they have
what they call Beethoven’s piano. It is such a special instrument, of course,
historically, that they have taken a rope and they’ve tied it around it and when
you come, you are escorted around. You can see it but the rope is there. As
the guide was going on down, all of a sudden he heard chopsticks with two
fingers. And the young man stepped back under the rope and turned to the guide
and said, “How’d you like that?” And the guide said, “Pavarotti was here last
week and he didn’t think he was worthy to touch it.”
Do
you understand that we come to this holy place, we read out of a holy book, we
talk to a holy God? You can know anything else about him, but if he is not holy
to you, you will diminish him and not pay attention to him, and make fun of
him. But once you have come to a sense of awe and reverence, then he’s on the
throne and I am kneeling before him.
If
you walk out of this building today and somebody said, “How’d it go?” and you
say, “We just had a nice little time,” then you haven’t seen the one you came to
see.
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