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The Greatest Gift
A sermon by
Dr. James Flamming
Pastor, First Baptist Church, Richmond, Virginia
Sunday, August 6, 2006
Part of a series from favorite Psalms, “Lift Up Your Eyes!”
Psalm 139
Let me ask you a question. What is the greatest gift?
In our recent Vacation Bible School, they would begin the
day in chapel. And they would take up an offering. And they did it a little
differently. What they did – they had two buckets. One was pink, for the
girls, and one was blue, for the boys. A little competition, who gave the
most. And it was all for a mission cause. And do you know that the children of
Bible School gave over a thousand dollars?
In the later part of the week, because our Bible School
reaches out to all sections of the city, some of those are children from the
inner city. And one of our children from the inner city, toward the end of the
week, came up to one of our workers and said, “I don’t have any money and I
can’t get any money. And my family doesn’t have any money. But last Christmas,
some people came by and they gave, they gave us a game. And it’s a game that
has play-like money. And so, I brought it today and I wondered if you could
take it because I want to give something.”
What’s the greatest gift?
What’s the greatest gift gives us? You might say
‘salvation’ and that would certainly be an adequate and wonderful answer. Or
you might say ‘forgiveness.’ Or you might even say, ‘The greatest gift of all
is eternal life, that when we die we have a promise of life everlasting.’ And
certainly every one of those would be correct. But you know what the absolute
greatest gift is, the gift that is there at the very beginning and the gift that
is there at the very ending of all things, is the presence of God. Before Adam
and Eve sinned, they were in the garden. They didn’t need salvation and they
didn’t need forgiveness. But God came to them and said, ‘I will walk with you
in the cool of the evening.’ And at the end of the Bible, in Revelations,
Revelation 21, it is said, as God comes and says ‘I will make a new heaven and a
new earth and all that has been will be past away.’ That means that all of our
sins will be wiped out. It means that all of the worries that you now have will
not only be past tense, they will be forgotten tense. And you see, all of the
confessions you have made will be as irrelevant, huh, will as irrelevant as
yesterday’s way of listening to music on records. But it says, ‘I will dwell
with my people and they will be my people and I will be their God.’
In the middle, everything is happening and all of the
stories are cascading and that’s when you need all that we teach in the
scripture. But at the beginning and the ending the greatness of it all is the
presence of God.
God came to Moses and he said, ‘I will be with you. I will
go before you, don’t be afraid.’ He came to Joshua and he said, ‘Do not worry.
Do not be terrified for I will go with you wherever you go.’ Psalm 23: ‘Yea,
though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for
thou art with me.’ I will fear no evil for, say it with me, ‘Thou art with
me.’ The last words our Jesus gave before he ascended into heaven were these,
‘I will never leave you nor forsake you, not even to the end of the age.’ The
greatest gift is God’s willingness to be with us, whatever.
The crown jewel of all of the scriptures, when it comes to
the presence of God, is Psalm 139, and I ask you to turn to it at this time,
Psalm 139, if you have a pew Bible, it’s page nine hundred and seventy four.
Now, I know we have read these scriptures already this morning as we have moved
through our worship time, but if you don’t mind turn to them again and I will be
pointing to some of them as we go through the sermon.
When I was a child and I went to Bible School, they gave us
three long words to memorize. One of them was ‘omniscience’ and the other one
was ‘omnipresence’ and the other one was ‘omnipotence’ and I have to confess
that although I didn’t know the words and didn’t know what they meant, I did
remember them. Omniscience means that God is all-knowing. Omnipresence means
that He’s everywhere present. Omnipotent means all-powerful. Let me tell you
something. If I were to walk into a hospital room and walk up to the bed and
there one of ours was just terribly, terribly ill and needed strength and
encouragement and comfort to get through the day and I were to stand at the foot
of the bed and I say and I were to say to them, ‘Take heart – because there is
omniscience and omnipresence and omnipotence.’ It would be true. It would also
be comfortless.
But when I walk to the edge of that bed and take a hand and
look in the face and say, ‘God is here with us. God will be with us and God
will be with you and let’s pray about it,’ all of a sudden it makes all the
difference in the world. Now you understand why there are so many personal
pronouns as you begin the psalm.
Listen to it.
‘Oh, Lord, you have searched me and you’ve known me. And you
understand when I sit and when I rise and you perceive my
thoughts afar off. You discern my going out and my lying down and
are familiar with all of my ways.’
The greatness of God’s presence is that it is so personal.
He knows you. He knows all about you. He knows before you do something. It is
that kind of personal presence that tends to begin to transform all of us. But
you know there is something more than, more wonderful than knowing about
someone. And that is wanting to be with someone.
Listen to this.
‘You hemmed me in behind and before and you have laid your hand on me.’
Touch. The power of caring and loving touch. ‘You’ve laid
your hand on me. Such knowledge is too wonderful. I can’t contain it.’
Henri Nouwen once visited Petersburg, Russia, to see
Rembrandt’s favorite, famous painting on the prodigal son and after, after he
had been there and they wanted him to move on so other tourists could get
through, he asked if, he asked the management if he, if he could stay after
everybody was gone and just stay and just look at the painting and spend hours
just being there. And they allowed him to do it; course, he was a somebody and
they knew it. I’m not sure they’d let us do that. But if they did, you know
where I’d like to spend hours? Sistine Chapel, Rome, where the very famous
painting of Michelangelo, where God is reaching out to Adam. Some people think
that’s the creation moment. No-no-no-no-no. Adam’s already created. Besides
that, the fingers never touch. But if you study that magnificent, matchless
painting, God is stretching, reaching, finger reaching out to touch. Adam’s
kind of sleepy. Not exactly enthusiastic. Kind of uh-um. Michelangelo put his
finger on it, don’t you think, that God is reaching out and trying to touch us
in every possible way. The unforgettable picture is not animal, is not Adam.
The unforgettable picture is God.
In his book, God is Closer Than You Think, John
Ortberg tells of sitting on a plane next to a businessman and he saw on the
screensaver of the, uh, laptop that he had a little tow, a little tow-headed boy
and he asked an innocent question. He said, ‘Is that your son?’ Wrong
question. Unless you want to listen a lot. Yes, that was the man’s son and,
yes, those were the first steps he took. And he was eleven months old then, but
watch while I show you all the steps he’s taken since that time. He not only
had pictures on his laptop but on his Palm Pilot and he said, ‘I can’t wait to
get home to him and in the meantime I have taken these pictures and I know you
will want to see them and I don’t ever get tired of looking at them.’ Well, by
then, of course everybody else around there was a little bit weary of it all but
not the man. He said, ‘You know, through the day when I am just kind of weary
and I don’t want to be away from home but I am, I just pull up the pictures and
I look at my son. And all of a sudden it makes all the difference.’ John
Ortberg said you know he wanted to say, ‘Look, man, I had children and they
walked too. And they walked just as well as yours walked.’ Matter of fact, he
wanted to say ‘better,’ but he didn’t.
Now why was this man so preoccupied with his little boy?
Was it that his little boy was the only one on the face of the earth that
learned how to walk? No. Was it because of his achievements? No, he’s a
little boy. Why was he obsessed with that little boy? Because he was seeing
him through the eyes of a loving father.
When Jesus calls God Father and he’s the first one on the
face of the earth to do so, he is saying God sees you through the eyes of a
loving father. He’s preoccupied with you. And whether or not you can put your
arms around that, that he could be preoccupied with every one of us, remember,
He’s God. Not, not limited like we are. If God can create a billion galaxies,
every one of those galaxies with millions of stars and planets, don’t you think
God can take time out to put you on His screensaver? Sure, he can. ‘Oh, Lord,
you hem me in front to back, sides. You know me altogether. And you have
touched me with your hand.’ There’s something much better than simply knowing
about somebody. And it’s wanting to be with someone. And that’s God and you.
There is another part of this. And the part of it that the
psalmist comes to is the extremities of where God will go with you. Where will
God not go with you? Where will he stop? You go on, he stops. You walk
through the door, he stops.
One of our granddaughters was doing some clay work with
Shirley. As you know, Shirley, my wife, is a potter and such a good one.
Course, I’m biased, but she is. And, and it’s in the basement where Shirley
does her, her clay work and she pounds the clay, and works it, and shapes it,
and fires it, and glazes it. Granddaughter is there working with clay and kind
of copying her grandmother. And on that particular day, suddenly, a spider
appears. Now it was just a wolf spider, that’s what we call then anyway.
Wasn’t poisonous. Probably pretty good to get rid of mosquitoes and a lot of
other stuff. Didn’t matter to our granddaughter. Far as she’s concerned, all
spiders are poisonous. They are from outer space, aliens whose great mission is
to destroy her, and so she screams, ‘A spider!’ And she ran up the stairs to
the top and she said, ‘there’s a spider down there.’ And, of course, all of us
tried to look very concerned and, uh, she called the basement the spider room.
I would guess most of us have a spider room. At least,
deep in our souls, a place we don’t like to go. A place where, uh, there are
places in the city you don’t like to drive. Now, I want to ask you something.
Where is God’s spider room with you? Where is, where will he not go with you?
The Bible says, ‘Where can I go from your spirit? Where can I flea from your
presence? If I go up into the heavens, you are there. If I make my bed in the
depths, you are there. And if I rise on the wings of the dawn and if I settle
on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me and your right
hand will hold me fast.’ When it says ‘I will make my bed in the depths, you
are there’ the word ‘depths’ is the word ‘sheol’ in Hebrew and it’s the word for
hell. It’s the word for the rejected spirits of the dead. If I make my bed in
the depths, in hell, even in the hells of this life, you are there. The whole
point is that for God there are no spider rooms.
I don’t know where you are this morning in your spirit,
don’t know where your heart is. I don’t know where your life is, but I know
this. You may not have paid any attention to God but God has paid attention to
you. Like the father with the little boy on the airplane, you are on God’s
screensaver. If you want to live your life as if God was no resource and that
his love and his care and his leadership and guidance were of no matter to you,
that’s your business. But I’m going to tell you this. There is no place you
can go that God is not going to be there with you. And so, what will be your
response?
We talked a little bit about the Sistine Chapel. There is
a space between God’s reaching out and Adam’s reaching out. It is as if
Michelangelo understood very well that there’s a choice and we choose that final
yes to make to the connection. We are the ones who finally are willing to say,
‘OK, God, here’s my hand, here’s my life. I want you.’
There is a frightening story in Mark 6. It is the first
time after Jesus began his active ministry that he went home. Went home to the
homefolks, Nazareth. Jesus’ ministry had been going exceptionally well. Crowds
were following. Wherever he went, he drew crowds. He was a celebrity at that
point. Not only that. Through him God had done some incredible miracles. Now
he’s going home to the homefolks and I’m sure he was eager to share what God had
done with those who had seen him grow up. But it didn’t happen. When he got
there, what they saw was not the Messiah. What they saw was not the
miracle-worker. What they saw was not the Son of God. What they saw was the
carpenter’s son. What’s so great about him? He looks just like he did when he
was growing up. And because of their unbelief, says the scripture, he was able
to do nothing.
The church is Jesus’ Nazareth. This is home for Jesus.
This is where our allegiance and his allegiance comes together in a focus. And
I wonder so often when we meet together if we’re heard his name so often, we’ve
broken the bread so often, we’ve taken the cup so often, and we just kind of,
‘he’s the carpenter’s son.’ We treat him as if he’s just the carpenter’s son.
For a moment, for a time, in these next minutes, sense his presence here this
morning. Realize that the God of gods, who all, who came through Jesus Christ
to touch us all, has you on his screensaver. And as you break the bread and as
you take the cup, sense his touch, receive his presence, and reach out to be
touched by the Lord.
Here’s the way you can get into it. Listen to the verse:
‘Search me, O God, and know my
heart.
Test me and know my anxious
thoughts.
See if there be any offensive way
in me
and lead me in the life
everlasting.’
And on that night when he took the bread and he broke it
and he said, ‘This is my body which is broken for you.’ And then he took the
cup and he said, ‘This is my blood which is shed for you for the remission of
your sins.’ What the Lord was doing was creating something so that every once
in a while, at least, we remember him. As a matter of fact, he said it that
way. ‘When you break the bread, remember me. When you drink the cup, remember
me.’
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