|
|
Claiming Your Heritage
A sermon preached by Dr.
James Flamming
Pastor, First Baptist Church, Richmond, Virginia
on the occasion of the church’s 225th anniversary celebration
Sunday, June 12, 2005
I
ask you please to turn to Hebrews, the 12th Chapter. I will begin
reading with the first verse. The writer has been putting together for the early
Christians how the old Covenant and the new Covenant relate. The Old Testament
with its 39 books, the New Testament with its 27, how in the world with a
heritage do you move on to the hope in Christ? And that is what Hebrews is all
about. He comes to a very significant climax when, in Chapter 11, he catalogues
the heroes of the Old Testament and calls them the heroes of faith. But in the
12th Chapter, he moves on. And he says, “Since we are surrounded by
this great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders us and
the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race that
is set before us. And let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of
our faith.” Take a look at one verse more, over in the 13th Chapter,
and the 8th verse. “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and
forever.” This is the Word of the Lord.
Ben
Fisher used to delight to tell the story of the Bear Swamp Orphanage in the
Tennessee mountains. A caring institution before its time, the preacher would
spend most of the summer collecting offerings in the little churches in the
hills of Tennessee. These offerings would take care of the children through the
cold winter months and buy clothes for them. He had finished his summer
pilgrimage and taken all of the small gifts and had put them into 100 silver
pieces. Lot of money in those days. It would be enough to carry the children
through the fall, the winter, and the early spring.
He
was going over the hill, down to where the orphanage was, when a robber from
behind the tree told him to stop. With a muzzle loading rifle pointed at your
chest, likely you would stop. He did. And the robber said, “Throw down on the
ground every single penny you have.” And so the preacher threw down on the
ground that little sack with all of the silver coins. As the robber reached
down to pick them up, the preacher said, “You can take those. But I want you to
know that a little Baptist orphanage down yonder exists and that because you
have robbed me, some little children will not have enough to eat this winter.
And others will be cold in the dead of winter. The robber thought for a minute
and then he handed him back the pouch with the silver coins. And he said, “Aw,
Reverend, I don’t want to take your money. You see, I am a Baptist, too.”
To
be human is to have a heritage. Even if you are a robber. Sometimes that
heritage is strong and sometimes it’s weak. May be rich. May be poor. May be
joyful. May be sad. May be loving. May be critical. But we all have a
heritage. To be human is to have a heritage. Churches have a heritage. Do you
realize how rare it is for a church to be two hundred and twenty-five years old
and still has a full house on Sunday morning?
Glen Aikens, who is our man at the Virginia Baptist Board, sat down with me one
day and I quibbled with him up and down and he said, “Do you realize that you
pastor a church that is in the top 10 percent of membership and participation
across the face of the nation?” I said, “Can’t be.” And I named off ten or
twelve super churches, mega churches with mega memberships and people, and he
looked at me with that little twinkle in his eye and said, “It’s interesting to
me that you can name them.” And then he got out his statistics. And I said to
him, “Do you know of any church that is our size that is holding its own and can
be called healthy that is still an inner city church?” And he said, “I am sure
there is another one, but I don’t know it.”
Our
heritage is so incredibly significant. But I don’t know of any place it is
spelled out more specifically than in that Hebrews passage where the writer
says, “You need to be looking unto Jesus, who is the author and the perfecter of
your faith.”
He
also quickly says there are some things that can hinder you. We have now been a
church in four different centuries. But our heritage has remained the same. Let
us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. Jesus Christ,
the same yesterday, and today, and forever. If you want to know who we really
are, don’t look at our history. Look at our Lord who is the same yesterday, and
today, and forever. If you want to know who we really are, don’t look at our
problems, past, present, and future. Look at our possibilities, which are made
possible because of the one who is the same yesterday, today, and forever. If
you want to know who we really are, don’t look at the triumphs of yesterday,
yesteryear, or yester century. Look at the one who triumphed over the cross,
sin, the grave, and is now the resurrected Lord. Who is the same yesterday,
today, and forever.
Predictably, as soon as God’s faithfulness is mentioned, our fruitfulness is
required. They always go together. The scene is a race. We are to run a race
that is set before us. And every church has its own type of running style and
its own kind of race. But we have won. And we are told to run with
perseverance the race that is set before us. This is not a sprint. This is a
marathon. We are supposed to have some instructions for running this race.
Don’t show up with your work boots called criticism. Show up with your running
shoes called “love one another.” And don’t show up with tie and shirt and ascot
and all of the rest of it labeled, “Only Sunday matters.” Show up with your
working clothes that you go to work in, but that inside there is a label that
says, “I belong to Jesus.” Run with perseverance the race that is set before
you.
We
are supposed to avoid sin. Now sin is a target word and it simply means missing
the target. Taking your focus off of the bull’s eye and this can happen in
churches – it happens all of the time when their preferences become more
important than the person of the Lord Jesus. Their opinions and their doctrines
and their traditions are somehow, as important as those things may be, become
more important than the centrality of Christ who is all and in all.
I
think of the conflicts that have dogged us as a church. In the early days, it
seemed that our congregation could argue just about anything. But we grew out
of it. We argued about whether we should have hymnals, whether we should have a
choir. Well, they finally voted to have a choir but they put them back in the
back – nothing wrong with that. But then they had an argument on whether you
ought to face the altar when you sing or face the choir when you sing.
And, of course, there was that turning point. I think it was a turning point,
when in the Civil War, in the heat of that conflict, the motion was made to take
our church bell and to give it to the Confederacy to be melted for cannon.
There were two – Mr. and Mrs. James Thomas – who were so horrified. And they
went to say to each other and to those around them, “We can’t let this happen.”
And Mr. Thomas bought the bell from the Government for gold pieces. Confederate
money wasn’t worth anything – gold was. And it belonged to the Thomases until
after the war and they gave it back to the church and when we are celebrating
our lunch today, that’s the bell that’s out there. And it was as if the courage
of some of God’s people who knew what was going on in God’s heart and knew that
the Lord Jesus had revealed the heart of God, said, “We can’t let this happen.”
Worship is more important than war, and love is more important than hate. We
ring that bell – we ring it often, we ring it on Sundays, we rang it at the turn
of the Millennium, we ring it for weddings, sometimes it’s a memorial time and
we ring it. And I could say to you it was because two members of this
congregation understood what it meant to keep their eyes on what Jesus stood
for.
There are so many other incidents in the life of the church that I don’t have
time to bring to you but I do want to say that this church has always felt the
call to missions. To reaching out. We were started by Bore Swamp Baptist
Church. Wasn’t that a neat name? You say, “Where did they get that name?”
Well, take out a map of the Richmond area, go out – look at it, north of the
airport, and you will see the area still called Bore Swamp. Bore Swamp Baptist
Church, now it is out by the airport and it is called Antioch.
1780. The capitol moved here from Williamsburg in April in the summer. Elijah
Baker, the wonderful pastor of that church, said, “We have got to have a church
in that new capitol,” and they sent a young fellow, Joshua Morris, such a wise
choice. Not much older than the high school graduates we celebrated last week.
And Joshua Morris started in a house and the rest is history. Our history. Our
mission history. We started, birthed, because of missions and we have been that
way ever since. When we sent Lott Carey to Africa, when we sent the Shooks to
China, and as I speak, there are 20 across the face of the earth that have come
through this church. Last year, we had almost 100 of our people involved in
participation missions, not to speak of the weekly service of our people who
minister who those who have been marginalized by our city. If you want to know
the heartbeat of our congregation, mission wise, you need to listen to the Lord,
who said, “Even as the Father has sent me, so send I you.”
I
close this time we are sharing together with a story that is very dear to me.
You have heard me share it before. But I give it to you as a gift again. Goes
back to the time when there were most of the people living on the … on the farm.
In
the summer when the thunderstorms came, the father would get up, in the middle
of the night he would go out, light the lantern, secure the doors of the barn
which had been left ajar because of the circulation and the heat. One storm
came up one night and he decided his son was old enough to learn how to do that
himself. It was a turning point for the boy. He woke him up. The boy put his
clothes on. The father walked him to the back door, pointed toward the barn,
and he said, “Here is the lantern, son. You are old enough. Go secure all the
doors. Make sure the animals are safe.” And the boy took the lantern in his
hand, stood there on the porch for a while, didn’t move. He looked at the
blackness outside. He saw the lightning across the sky and the thunder breaking
through the silence and he stood there. And the father said, “Go. Go on.” He
stood there. “Go, go son, go on.” Finally, he took his steps, feet down the
steps and onto the pathway, and he was halfway down the pathway when he just
froze. He couldn’t see the barn, he couldn’t see backwards the house, hmm, he
said, “Daddy, I can’t see anything. I am so afraid.” And his dad said, “Son,
just walk to the edge of the light and you will be there before you know it.”
This is the heritage of the church. We have been called to the edge. To walk to
the edge of the light we have been given. And when you walk to the edge of the
light you’ve been given, you get where you want to go sooner than you thought.
Some of you this morning walked in here – your face is shining, but there’s
darkness and fear in your heart. Listen to me. Walk to the edge of the light
you have been given, and God will be with you. He will never leave you nor
forsake you, and when you walk to the edge of the light you’ve been given, He
will give you some more light.
You
see, God is not in the business of making maps, but providing promises and
presence. Go with God to the edge of the light you’ve been given.
|
