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The Cup of the Lord
A sermon preached by Dr. James Flamming
Pastor, First Baptist Church, Richmond, Virginia
Sunday, November 14, 2004
I heard recently the tale of a man who lost his cell
phone. The man who found the phone ran down the scroll on the phone and found
mom. So, he called mom. You need to know mom is not only technologically
challenged, but technologically hostile. She had declared to everyone she
knows, “I will never have a computer and I will never have a cell phone.” So
when she got the call, she was not particularly equipped to deal with it.
The man called her and said, “Your son or daughter has lost
their cell phone. I have it. Will you call them and let them know?”
She said, “I have six children, which one do you want me to
call?”
He said, “I don’t know. All I know is that the area code
is 540.”
So, she got the telephone book out and looked at all the
area codes and discovered it was in the mountains so she decided to call her son
who lives in the northeast and has business in the mountains she called.
She got him out of a meeting and he said, “Mom, I don’t
know who lost the cell phone. I don’t care, but it wasn’t me. Call me again
some other time.”
Then mom said to herself, “I know who it is.” And she has a
son who lives at Virginia Beach and who loves to vacation in the mountains –
there’s a switch! And so she called him and he said, “Mom, 540 is the area code
of Bob. He lives there.”
And so she looked up Bob’s number and called it. It was
his cell phone number!
You know there’s a bit of confusion as God has tried to
connect with us on our heart phones. And the confusion is about the
relationship between rewards and giving. If I were to ask you, what is the one
place in the book of Acts, which is the history of the early church where Jesus
is quoted directly, where would it be and what would it be about? Well, I
invite your attention to Acts the 20th chapter and the 35th
verse. The scenario is this – the Apostle Paul is saying good-bye to some of
his very best friends. They will never meet again – he knows it and they know
it. Most of our good-byes are not of this kind. We can look forward to another
hello. This is not going to happen. As he talks to them, look at 34, Acts
20:34, “You yourselves know that these hands of mine have supplied my own needs
and the needs of my companions. In everything I did, I showed you that by this
kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words of the Lord Jesus
Himself who said, it is more blessed to give than to receive.” Blessings and
giving are living in the same neighborhood. They are not disconnected. They
are part of the same family.
Let’s talk about rewards here a little bit. For some
Christians to speak of rewards is to betray true motivation, but the truth is,
Jesus spoke about rewards a whole lot. If you ever want an interesting study,
just find yourself a concordance, look up the word reward and see how many times
he spoke about rewards. He didn’t just link rewards to money as we do. He
linked it to spiritual and relational blessings. There’s a story about a man
who prayed to God and he said, “God are you there?” And God replied, “Yes I’m
here.” And he said, “God, is it true that for you, a minute is like a thousand
years?” God said “Yes.” And the man said, now confidant, “And is it true that
for you, a penny is like a million dollars?” God said, “Yes.” And so the man
said, “God give me a penny.” And God said, “Okay, but it will take a minute.”
For a lot of people, giving to the Lord God through the
church is all about them. If they can get some reward out of it they’ll do it,
if they can’t, they won’t. Okay. Let’s play that game. Reward and blessing,
Jesus said, goes together. That it is more blessed to give than to receive.
Just don’t put a dollar sign around those blessings. I would guess that the
blessing that Jesus is talking about is revealed as the fruit of the Spirit in
Galatians the fifth chapter. When it is said by the Apostle Paul that the fruit
of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
gentleness, self-control. Let me just take five of them. If you could put a
price tag on love or joy or peace or patience or self-control, what price tag
would you put? Priceless…there isn’t anybody in this auditorium who would not
covet love, joy, peace, patience, self-control. And what Jesus is saying, don’t
overlook the fact that when you have the control of your budget, of your
finances, and you have it enough to where you can give to those as Paul said who
are the weak ones, the needy ones, and that’s you sooner or later…Oh you say,
I’m strong, I can run the marathon. God bless you! Let me tell you something.
Everybody in this room will sooner or later be in the category of needing
someone else and needing God and what the Lord Jesus is saying is, hey, there is
a heavenly equation here. Don’t overlook it! It is more blessed to give than
to receive.
I want you to turn now to Matthew the 10th
chapter and the 42nd verse. Now Jesus says a very profound thing in
verse 40. He says, “He who receives you receives me.” The connection Jesus has
between his followers is so intimate and so complete and so direct that He can
say, if somebody receives you they’ve received me, if they reject you, they
reject me. But then He says at the bottom, “And if anyone gives even a cup
(verse 42) of cold water to one of these little ones,” now Jesus sometimes uses
the phrase little ones to imply those who are struggling, who are weaker, who
need lift, like a child, like a little one, like you parents have done your
little ones. That there are times in adult living when you are like a little
one and you need to be picked up and you need to be hugged and you need to be
held and you need to be helped and Jesus says, if you give so much as a cup of
cold water and that is the symbol of providing what they need. “A cup of cold
water to one of these little ones because he is my disciple, I tell you the
truth, he will certainly not lose his reward.”
Now I want you to turn over to Luke the 8th
chapter, first verse. Now one of the things that happens when you give is
reward, love, joy, peace, patience and the rest of them. But another thing that
happens is that you empower, you enable, you make possible – in a sense you
invent answers, you invent solutions that the Holy Spirit gives action to. What
Luke 8 says is something you may never have thought about and that is who was
supporting Jesus in His ministry? He’s going from town to town, the twelve are
with Him, but then Luke, ever sensitive to the neglect of women in the ancient
world, calls attention to the fact that Mary and Joanna and Susanna and many
others were helping to support them out of their own means. Were these women
there when Jesus gave the parable of the prodigal son? Probably not. But they
made it possible. Were they there when Jesus healed blind Bartemeus? Blind
Bartemeus gave us the Jesus prayer – “Jesus son of David, have mercy on me.”
They probably weren’t there. They made it possible. They enabled it. Were
these ladies there when Jesus spoke to Nicodemus, John the third chapter? No.
Because it was a private conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus, it was after
dark, but they made it possible. They made it possible for Jesus to say to him;
you’ve got to be born from above. They made it possible to John 3:16 to be
there. My dear friend, you are like they were; you’re an enabler. You make it
happen. You arrange it. You create possibilities. You open up curtains. You
point things heavenward. Anybody who gives to the Lord Christ with ministry and
missions in mind is an enabler. And I don’t know whether you realize how much
you make possible through our church budget.
This last week, Virginia Baptists had their annual meeting
at Roanoke and Shirley and I were eating breakfast and the man at the next table
leaned over and said, “I see you’ve been doing 40 Days.” I said, “Yes.” He
said, “It’s been such a blessing for our church we’ve been right in rhythm with
you.” And he said, “Did you have a mission fair?” And I said, “Yes. And it was
fantastic,” and I described it a little bit and he said, “We had one too. And I
want you to know something, you guys were in it.” And I said, “Tell me about
that.” He said, “Well you see, some of the members of our congregation…” and
then he described where his church was. It’s a rural congregation in a county
to the northeast of here. And he said, “You know, some of our members really
have a passion for the homeless and there aren’t any homeless anywhere around
us, but we know where they are and we know that you’re in Richmond and enough of
our people watch your television worship that they said, ‘one of our passions
and one of our mission and ministries is going to be to help First Baptist
Church minister to the homeless.’” Now isn’t that incredible? And the Holy
Spirit takes all of that and He puts it together - the cup of cold water, the
weakness…
This last week I heard Bob Moore tell of a friend of his
who had cancer and the last days he could not talk and he arranged a simple way
of letting his family know what he needed and one finger meant ‘I’m thirsty,
could you give me something to drink or maybe some ice chips?’ Two fingers
meant ‘I’m in great pain, see if you can do something about it.’ And three
fingers meant ‘I love you, oh I love you so much.’ And then Bob said, “Isn’t
that what God does through us?” For there is so much thirst in this world for
something more than what we’ve got and can buy and can achieve. There is a
thirst for God, for spiritual things, for the ability to look beyond the right
now into eternity. And he said, “How many people are hurting and they are
saying, help us. Help us understand our pain and help us to understand what to
do about it spiritually speaking because spiritual is just as real as physical
pain and love…I love you so much.” If you haven’t discovered that about God you
have missed the complete gospel. That God comes to you with three fingers and
says I love you so much. But you’ve also discovered that there are people who
walk into our lives who know God personally and in behalf of that God, hold up
three fingers and say, I love you so much. And lives can turn around through
another person who knows God’s love and shares it.
Brennan Manning has been in town this week at Saint Giles
Presbyterian and it’s been good to hear him. He told of a story, he lives in
New Orleans. A woman came to see him and said, “Would you go see my father? He
doesn’t have long to live and I just would like for you to go see him. I’d feel
better if you went to see him.” And so Brennan did. He walked into the room and
there’s the bed and next to the bed was a chair facing the bed. He pulled it
back as if to sit in it and the man in the bed said, “I would rather you
wouldn’t do that, just leave it right where it is.” Brennan said, “I certainly
will. I’ll sit right over here, but do you mind telling me why?” He said, “Go
shut the door I don’t want anybody else to hear about this.” So he shut the
door and he said, “Let me tell you, all of my life I’ve wanted to learn how to
pray and I haven’t been able to. I’ve gone to church Sunday after Sunday, I’ve
heard series of sermons on prayers, I went to my priest and my priest gave me a
book and said this was the greatest book on prayer that had ever been written
and there were ten times I had to look in the dictionary the first three pages
and I gave up and I didn’t pray. And I can’t do it and then I got sick like I
am and I just needed to pray. I’ve got to get ready to meet God and I had a
friend and I said, this is where I am with this. Do you know anything about
prayer? I admire you so much. You always seem to be able to know God
personally, tell me how to pray and his friend said, oh it’s easy. I’ll tell
you how I do it. I just talk to God, but he said, sometimes it’s just hard for
me. And so I put a chair and I talk to the chair and he said, anybody would
think I’m crazy, but God’s in that chair, because God’s everywhere and pretty
soon I can see God there. He said, just try it. He said, I tried it and the
more I did it the more I knew the Lord was sitting in that chair and the more I
knew the Lord was sitting in that chair, the more I could talk to Him and I
talked to Him. All day I talked to Him. My daughter comes in and I’m
embarrassed. She thinks I’m going off my rocker so I quit, but I reserve that
chair for the Lord.”
About three days later, the daughter called and said, dad’s
gone. Brennan said, did he go quietly and peacefully? She said, I don’t know I
wasn’t there. I had left for groceries, but he did have a peaceful look on his
face, but you know it was a funny thing. He had worked himself over to the side
of the bed and when I found him, his head was on the chair next to the bed. He
went home, he went home to be with the Lord with his head on the Lord’s lap
because a friend told him how to pray.
You are an enabler and we come to a very high and holy
moment in our congregation. It happens that you have in your hand, in your
heart and in your soul possibilities. Bow your head and close your eyes and in
this quiet moment, I want you to think about yourself as an enabler. Not only
what you ought to give financially, but also what you ought to give of your
faith. What do you know best that you can share with somebody or does it need
to be that you are going to enable a reconciliation even today? Oh Lord Jesus,
not one of us in this room is perfect so we just have to come before you as
flawed people, but we know you love us and we know there’s nothing we can do
that will make us love more than you already do. And so we come to you this day
and we pledge to ourselves to take seriously being enablers; in Christ’s name,
Amen.
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