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First Steps for the First Month
A Sermon Preached
by Dr. James Flamming
First Baptist Church, Richmond, Virginia
January 8, 2006
In John Piper’s book, Don’t Waste Your Life, Piper
remembers an incident from his young years. His father was an evangelist who
traveled around so he didn’t get to hear him very often. But he remembers one
unforgettable night. At the end of the service a 70 year old man, for whom the
church had been praying for years, came to Christ. It was a victorious moment, a
celebrative moment, an answer-to-prayer moment. But what Piper remembers is not
the smiles, not the hallelujahs, not the celebration, but the words that the man
who had decided to follow Christ repeated over and again: “I have wasted my
life.”
Do you ever have the feeling – I’ve wasted my life?
Before you shake your head in agreement, two cautions.
First, life is present tense. The past does not need to be the composer for the
music of the present. That is true no matter how old you are. But second, Christ
has an uncanny way of using our past experiences, good and bad, to help someone
else along the way. God is an incredible economist. He never wastes anything. He
is not going to waste anything in your life if only you will let him have it.
Still, it is true that our lives can become nothing but
digital pictures of what might have been. A poet wrote,
The saddest words of tongue or pen,
What might Have been.”
And so, the year 2006 can be wasted. How do we keep that
from happening? Instead, how can we make 2006 full of growth intersections along
our spiritual and personal journey?
I want to ask two questions of the New Testament Gospels.
What did Jesus do when
he faced an intersection in his life?
He did something that signaled to everyone he was going in
a new direction. He was changing from doing the work of a carpenter to doing the
work of the Messiah, the Christ. He was leaving Nazareth and would embrace the
whole world. Instead of fashioning wood pieces, he would die on a wooden cross.
What a change of direction!
Great events or decisions need great symbols: weddings,
graduations, births. So what did Jesus do? He chose baptism which is the symbol
of death to the old way and birth to the new way.
And he was baptized by John the Baptizer, that eccentric
prophet who made it clear that his baptism was for sinners, sinners who came to
him to be washed in the waters of repentance and were then to go and sin no
more.
Now I ask you, “What need had Jesus of a baptism like that
that?” He was, by the eyewitnesses of his generation, sinless. He had nothing to
repent of. He had nothing to be forgiven for. It would seem appropriate for
Jesus to have walked up to John and said, “Thanks, Cousin, (because John was a
cousin of Jesus), “You have done exceptionally well but I will take over now.”
Instead, he is standing in line waiting his turn with all of the sorry looking
sinners to be baptized in that muddy water of the Jordan. Why?
It is like all of the questions we have about Jesus. Why
did he become man when he could have stayed God? Why does he come to us where we
are, over and over again, instead of insisting we come to him wherever he is?
The New Testament makes it very clear why. Because he loved
us. Love proves itself by being there, by meeting us where we live, by joining
us in the water, in the mud, in the skin, on the mountain side, on main street,
to show us how life is to be lived and then to give us the power to do something
about it.
Baptism became his great symbol of new beginnings. If you
decide to make a change in 2006 choose a symbol. Some light a candle, others put
up a cross, some memorize a verse of Scripture, some write a prayer. If you
choose to change something and grow something choose a symbol.
What did Jesus say
about not wasting our lives in 2006?
Look at the final words of his famous Sermon on the Mount.
It is about building a life and the choices of building a life. Only four verses
but they describe your life and mine, your choices and mine. (Matt. 7:24-27)
Put together your year with the right choices.
We are self-builders whether we like it or not. Jesus said,
the two choices are to hear but not to practice what Jesus said or to hear and
put into practice what Jesus said. The one who simply hears, says Amen, likes
what has been said, but then goes his way and changes nothing. He is like one
who builds his life on sand.
Why is it at New Year’s Resolution time that so few
resolutions are kept? What some of us do not understand and have never thought
through is that the will, the decision making apparatus with in us, is the most
feeble of all of our inner strengths when left to itself. The will is not a
strong solo voice that can be heard above the storms. It is a weak, often
off-key choir member who needs strong voices around it. To say “I resolve in
2006 to . . .” is not like the four year old running around the play-ground
seeing if anyone can catch him. New Year’s resolutions are like the toddler who
is just learning to walk and needs someone to hold onto.
Now will-power, is essential to our moving ahead. But it
cannot stand alone. So Jesus teaches us what will-power needs.
In his first sermon as recorded by Mark, Jesus preaches to
us about where that help is to be found.
Provide the right environment.
“The time has come,” says Jesus, “and the Kingdom of God
has come near.” (Mark 1:15, 1552) The environment is a sense of urgency. Do it
now.
The time has come. And the environment is to understand the
principles of Kingdom life. You need a King and you need the people of the
Kingdom.
Will-power needs urgency and Kingdom sensitivity.
Let me put it as a child might. Danny Dutton, an elementary
student, wrote about his belief in God. Danny lives in Chula Vista, California.
He wrote:
“One of God’s main jobs is making people. He makes them to
take care of things here on earth. He doesn’t make grownups, just babies. I
think that’s because they are smaller and easier to make. That way he doesn’t
have to take up his valuable time teaching them to talk and walk. He can just
leave that up to mothers and fathers.
“God’s second most important job is listening to prayers.
An awful lot of this goes on. Some people, like preachers and things, pray other
times than just before bedtime. God doesn’t have time to listen to the radio or
TV on account of this.
“Jesus is God’s Son. He used to do all the hard work, like
walking on water and doing miracles, and trying to teach people about God who
really didn’t want to learn. They finally got tired of him preaching to them and
they crucified him. But he was good and kind like his Father, and he told his
Father that they didn’t know what they were doing and to forgive them. And, God
said, “Okay!” His Dad appreciated everything he had done and all his hard work
on earth, so he told him he didn’t have to go out on the road anymore. He could
stay in heaven. So he did.
If you don’t believe in God, besides being an atheist, you
also will be very lonely, because your parents can’t go everywhere with you –
like to camp – but God can.
It’s good to know that he’s around when you’re scared of
the dark or when you can’t swim very good and you get thrown in real deep water
by big kids. But, you shouldn’t just always think of what God can do for you.
And that’s what I believe about God.
Thanks Danny Dutton for seeing the atmosphere in which
change can happen.
Now Jesus gets to the two foundation stones of building a
good strong 2006.
The first is the willingness to change. That is what
repentance is about: ownership and change. Pick something in your life that
needs changing. Own up to it. Put your name on it. Now begin to practice that
change on a daily or weekly basis.
The second is the command to believe and trust.
Believe is the word for faith in the language of the New
Testament. Faith has two parts: believing and trusting. They are not the same.
You may have heard the story about Blondin, the famous
French tightrope walker who strung a tightrope across Niagara Falls and before
thousands of cheering people inched his way from the Canadian side of the falls
to the U.S. side of the falls. He made it. Thousands cheered. Blondin shouted
back at the crowd. “Now, do you believe in me?” The crowd shouted back, “We
believe! We believe!” Blondin then replied, “Do you believe I can go back
across the falls carrying someone on my shoulders?” They shouted again, “We
believe! We believe!” Blondin then asked, “Who will be that someone. Who will
climb on my back and let me carry them back across the falls?” Dead silence.
After an awkward pause a man stepped forward (it turned out to be his business
manager). He climbed on Blondin’s shoulders and allowed himself to be carried
ever so slowly to the other side. They made it.
The point here is that believing needs a partner – trust.
It is easy to cry “We believe.” It is not as easy to trust that God can take us
across the Niagara falls of life.
Trusting God demands practice. You can say you believe all
you want to but until you begin to trust God, you are still building on the
sand.
Well, here we are at the beginning of a new year.
I believe that when we follow Christ in changing something
that needs to be changed in our lives and believe and trust in him, that in a
small way the heaven’s open and the Lord says, “This is my beloved child, in him
or her I am well pleased.”
You stand at the beginning of the year 2006. Don’t waste
it!
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