January 6, 2013 Sermon- Firsts and Foundations
It’s the first Sunday in January. I like firsts. I like beginnings. There’s always so much potential in a new start. There’s so much hope as a thing begins. Now the new thing doesn’t actually have to be brand spanking new.
Recently the car I drive here became more trouble than it was worth and right next door to the service station that was getting more and more money due to the fiscal black hole that was my old car, I found a new car.
Well, a 2002 Hyundai that looked new, ran great and was really, really cheap. To me it’s new. So, yes, ‘new’ is in the eye of the beholder.
“New” to God is something else yet again. The call to newness of life and to renewal is found mostly anywhere you look in the Bible.
And ‘new’ to God has little to do with New Years Resolutions. It has nothing to do with human resolve at all. It has to do with His love and His work.
Isaiah 43:18-21 says this: 18 “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. 19 See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland. 20 The wild animals honor me, the jackals and the owls, because I provide water in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland, to give drink to my people, my chosen, 21 the people I formed for myself, that they may proclaim my praise”.
Now this is awesome. Don’t get stuck in the past. Good advice...because all of us can do that if we’re not careful. Look at the new thing that God is doing. In the barren wilderness and wasteland God is making a way out.
Who doesn't need to hear this? Who doesn't need to hear that God is actively at work bringing us from despair to hope, from wilderness to a land of plenty. Who doesn't need to hear that there are streams in the wasteland?
That’s lovely, just lovely. But what makes it more than lovely is that it is rooted in something, it’s grounded in something real, it’s grounded in something authentic...in a relationship with God.
Most things in life aren't really so grounded. Now Electricians appreciate the value of groundedness. That much is true. But so much of modern life is not grounded in reality, in anything substantial, in anything that holds water.
Most things about modern life are without foundation. A few years ago standing out front of this building, I heard a woman yell: "I have 323 friends on Facebook, but you think one of them would call me to go out for coffee?"
Newsflash: if a person who you 'friend' on Facebook isn't already a real, actual, flesh and blood friend, 'friending' them (Can you believe friending is now a word?); 'friending' them does not make them a friend.
Detached from the real world, social media, that absorbs so much of people's time and energy nowadays, builds faux 'communities' that are groundless, and 'friends' that cannot come through for you for one reason: They're not your actual friend...if you don't interact with them in real life. These are Communities without foundations.
The movie The Life of Pi {PPT] is visually stunning. It is also a study on one level of comparative religion. One thing about comparative religion is that it teaches people to be comparatively religious.
It has nothing to offer spiritually in my view and I wouldn't encourage anyone to draw any insights about what it means to follow the living God from it. Far too muddy.
But the movie is about many things. Much of the film takes place at sea where a 16 year old boy struggles against the elements: a hostile, unpredictable ocean, an unfortunately boat- mate…a hungry tiger, and his own fear. But the core issue is that the boy is lost at sea, without a firm footing on the ground.
All his problems are due to his inescapable reality of having no actual grounding, no solid foundation upon which to move forward in his life.
And without a foundation the boy at sea, and each and every one of us here can only try our best to do one thing: survive. But...life is much more than trying to survive.
Les Miserables [Pic] -the play and now the movie is about many things. At one level, for 2 of its characters, it’s about the difference between having a firm footing in the law versus having a firm footing in grace.
The main character, Jean Valjean, after having been horribly wrong-done by the justice system is released from jail after nearly 20 years for the crime of stealing a loaf of bread to feed his sister and her child and resisting arrest.
As a parolee, Valjean is branded an outcast and his identification card is yellow colored —identifying him to all as a former offender.
He is at this point reduced nearly to an animal, thinking only of himself, his survival and the very next step he must take to live. He is unhinged by his experience in prison, suspicious, ungrounded.
So he steals again, valuable silverware from Bishop Myriel of Digne, who had given him a place to stay. He steals from the bishop, is caught by the police and is returned to the bishop who they hope will indict Valjean for theft.
Unruffled, the bishop brushs off the police, adds valuable silver candlesticks to the bundle, "bought" Jean Valjean's soul from evil and claimed it for God.
He redirected the life of a man chained to hatred, mistrust and anger, and he enabled Jean Valjean to emerge as one of the noblest characters in literature.
Out of this encounter with grace, really God’s grace expressed through one of Christ’s followers, Valjean becomes a repentant, honorable, dignified man.
The new foundation of his life is grace. He experiences it, he expresses it, he lives it. He lives in gratitude to God for all that he has received.
He is kind to all he encounters, a devoted substitute father to a girl who loses her mother, and a helping friend to those in need. He is a bearer of grace to those he meets. Although he is a known criminal and a parolee, he adopts and lives a new identity. Valjean. He grows morally to represent the best traits of humanity.
His rival, Javert, is a dedicated and capable police officer who occupies a place of honor in society. The relationship of Valjean and Javert is about the great tension opposition between law and love. Javert sees Valjean only as the convict he once was, rather than the great man he has become.
Javert spends most of his time hunting down Valjean. Javert’s foundation is human law. Human notions of right and wrong. That’s his anchor.
He is obsessed with the law to the extent that, in the end, when his life is spared by Jean Valjean and he sees the superiority of a life grounded on grace rather than law, he chooses to kill himself.
The foundation of his life was no foundation at all. When challenged face to face by grace, his life was shown to have been a waste.
So...Pi needed a foundation. Jean Valjean needed a foundation. Javert needed a foundation. That’s true for all of us.
I want to suggest that the only way to move forward, to make any progress whatsoever in our lives, is to have an assured footing, a firm foundation.
Bill Ryan tells the story of when he would coach little league baseball [pick up bat].
Without fail he could always tell which batter was going to hit the ball. The ones that couldn’t or wouldn’t plant their feet firmly on the ground when they hit the ball would always miss, or their aim would be wildly off.
The ones who planted their feet firmly could be counted upon to hit the ball better all of the time.
There is, for all of humanity, only one truly sure footing, one firm foundation to life. All other ground, as Javert found, is sinking sand.
That foundation is not a philosophy we need to be faithful to. It’s not an activity we need to be committed to. The only true foundation is found in a person. Jesus Christ is that person.
Jesus taught us how to live. He showed us what it means to love, to live generously, freely; to live with a purpose beyond our own gratification. He showed us what it truly means to have a relationship with the living God.
The Bible shows us what Jesus taught and how He lived. The Bible shows us what it means to live grounded in a relationship with Jesus, filled with the Holy Spirit. Jesus’ life and His teaching are one thing.
Now Jesus said this just after giving the sermon on the mount, which describes radical Kingdom living; it describes living for God and in God and with God and by God’s grace.:
Matthew 7:24 “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25 The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. 26 But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. 27 The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”
Here Jesus speaks of the absolute necessity of building your life on the right kind of foundation. Because the foundation is what holds everything up, it’s what holds everything together.
No matter what quality of materials you use; no matter how carefully you join the frame together; no matter how skilled your craftsmen may be – if the foundation isn’t solid and stable, your “house” will lack integrity. Over time, cracks will develop in the walls.
The windows will stick. The roof will leak. And sooner or later, the storms of life will bring it crashing down, and everything you’ve worked so hard to build will be lost.
To put Jesus words into practice is to build a truly solid foundations for a life, one that’s able to withstand all the storms that will get tossed at it. To hear Jesus words, on the otherhand, and to NOT do them is no different really than never hearing them in the first place.
That would be to build an unstable life that will NOT be able to cope with the challenges and hardships of life. And a life that will not be fulfilled ultimately in heaven.
All that is true. But you know, it's more than only acting on the teachings of Jesus. To put the teachings of Jesus into action without knowing him as our Lord and Savior. That can end up being just another form of moralism. That’s a type of ‘doing good’ that leads people to mistakenly think that they can earn their own salvation through good works.
Of course Jesus's teachings are the wisest on the planet. Of course to live the way God intends us to live is to live the best possible life.
But genuine faith is not about following rules. The following-rules approach to God is a lot of what is wrong with religion in general. If our faith is about following rules, that’s just religious moralism. It’s dry. It’s dead.
It’s so far short of the life Jesus intends for you and for me.Genuine faith is about loving God. Genuine faith is about knowing God personally.
I am not a morning person. I am the opposite of morning person. I do not like mornings. Mornings do not like me.
But in the last number of months, I've started to get up much earlier than I used to.
Typically around six or 6:15 AM in the morning. Believe me, I am not bright eyed and bushy tailed. Zombie-like would be a better way of describing me at 6 in the morning.
But, I love it. You know why? That is my time to meet with God. That is my time to read the Word of God. It’s my time to really listen. It’s my time to talk to God without an urgent something else to get done.
That's my time to reflect on the Bible, to reflect on my inner life, to give myself without distraction to God so that He can do His deep work of transformation in my heart.
I’ve got to tell you, I feel better as a result about everything in life. It’s awesome. It’s abysmally early, yes, but it’s so incredibly liberating to spend time in God’s presence. So you see, it’s about knowing God and growing in relationship with Him.
AND, of course, it’s about living the way Jesus calls us to, living deeply and firmly rooted, established in Him. It’s loving Him with our hearts and souls and minds.
When you love someone, it’s easy to want to please them. Some of you know that I’m utterly and completely in love with the loveliest woman on the planet, my wife Barbara. Because I love her I want to please her.
I want to do things for her. I want to be generous and kind and caring and thoughtful toward her. When you love someone it’s easy to want to please them. So it is with loving God.
May each of us begin this year, not with resolutions that depend on our discipline and our will-power. You gotta know where that’s going to lead.
But may we begin this year more committed than ever to loving God, to actively nurturing that love relationship by giving the King of Glory our undivided attention as part of the rhythm of our days.
May we be rooted, grounded, established, fixed upon Jesus Christ, our Anchor, our hope, our Saviour, our Risen Lord. And may you and I together walk as His people in this community, leading people to know Jesus, who is Life everlasting.
“I confess that Jesus is Lord
I confess that Jesus shares the name and the nature, the holiness, the authority, power, majesty and eternality of the one and only true God.
I confess that Jesus died and was raised, opening heaven up to unworthy sinners. I am such a sinner, and I gladly embrace his atonement for me.
I confess that Jesus rightfully owns me, every part of me, every moment of my time, every dollar in my possession, every opportunity granted me, every responsibility thrust upon me, every hope I cherish, every person whom I love and treasure. I am the personal property of the Lord Jesus Christ. He deserves my allegiance, loyalty and trust 24 hours a day, in all places, in all aspects of my life, both public and private. He is worthy of my obedience. He is worthy of my utmost. He is worthy of my very blood” . (By Ray Ortlund, Jr.)
Amen.
