Hugh Anderson - "The Battle of the Soul" (June 19, 1960)
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
- | Watch how this thing right here flickers, | 0:50 |
when you talk and you can know by that, that it's recording. | 0:53 | |
(bright worship music) | 0:59 | |
Thing to remember is it's just this button here. | 1:05 | |
It's all you have to do. | 1:09 | |
Then to stop it, just. | 1:10 | |
- | Horizons incorporated. | 1:14 |
A contradiction in terms, some of you will say, | 1:18 | |
for that was my own first reaction. | 1:20 | |
Horizons have a set of stereo type adjectives, | 1:23 | |
boundless, illimitable, | 1:28 | |
vast, sweeping (indistinct). | 1:30 | |
In the name of God the Father, | 2:03 | |
God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. | 2:06 | |
Amen. | 2:10 | |
How do you, in your more imaginative moments, | 2:18 | |
picture your life? | 2:22 | |
Many artists and poets have depicted life for example, | 2:26 | |
as a voyage. | 2:33 | |
And that's a very apt picture of human life, | 2:35 | |
because then you can see the frail vessel | 2:38 | |
setting out upon life's very stormy and hazardous sea. | 2:42 | |
And we know that life sometimes is like a voyage | 2:48 | |
on a very perilous ocean. | 2:51 | |
Or again, poets and artists have depicted life as a march. | 2:54 | |
And indeed life is like a march, | 3:01 | |
because if you put your ear to the ground as it were, | 3:04 | |
you can hear the tram, tram, tram | 3:09 | |
of a million marching feet. | 3:12 | |
The pilgrim hosts of humanity | 3:15 | |
on their higher road through life. | 3:18 | |
But I believe the most dramatic | 3:22 | |
and the most realistic picture of human life | 3:27 | |
among all pictures, is of life as a battle. | 3:31 | |
Because only this picture gets into the inward depth | 3:37 | |
of our personal existence. | 3:42 | |
William James once said, | 3:46 | |
"I don't know whether life is a battle or no, | 3:48 | |
but it certainly feels likewise." | 3:52 | |
And indeed through all the centuries, | 3:56 | |
men in thinking profoundly | 3:59 | |
about the meaning and nature of man's existence | 4:02 | |
and man's destiny, | 4:05 | |
have talked about the battle in the human soul. | 4:06 | |
For instance, the Jews of Jesus time | 4:11 | |
used to say that in man's heart, | 4:14 | |
there were two inclinations. | 4:18 | |
A good inclination and an evil inclination, | 4:21 | |
and both as it were, were war with each other. | 4:24 | |
Then Jesus of course, very frequently spoke | 4:30 | |
about the tension in the human soul. | 4:34 | |
He had his own way of looking upon life as a battle, | 4:37 | |
for he spoke frequently, about man's possibility | 4:41 | |
of losing life or of finding it. | 4:45 | |
He spoke to this theme of the battle in the human heart. | 4:49 | |
And in the New Testament again, | 4:54 | |
the apostle Paul very frequently does the same thing. | 4:56 | |
He speaks about the war within his member | 5:00 | |
as though his heart were a battleground itself. | 5:04 | |
John Bunyan, in describing a particular character of his, | 5:10 | |
said of him, that God and the devil | 5:15 | |
are waging a tug of war for his soul. | 5:17 | |
And when you come right down to modern times, | 5:22 | |
this is the note which is struck | 5:26 | |
by a good deal of existentialist theology today. | 5:29 | |
This note of the battle in the human heart. | 5:33 | |
Martin Heidegger, the European existentialist for instance, | 5:37 | |
speaks about the struggling man, | 5:41 | |
between what he calls authentic existence, | 5:44 | |
and on the other hand, inauthentic existence. | 5:48 | |
Well, you can describe it how you like. | 5:52 | |
You can use the modern language of the existentialist, | 5:55 | |
you can use the language of the New Testament, | 5:58 | |
but what is important is that every one of us | 6:01 | |
who has any sensitivity of conscience at all | 6:05 | |
is aware deep within us this morning, | 6:08 | |
that in reality, life is a battle. | 6:11 | |
That there is a struggle going on in the human heart, | 6:15 | |
between conflicting forces of good and evil, | 6:19 | |
and it is quite dramatic in its intensity, | 6:22 | |
and it's utterly inescapable for this is every man's life | 6:25 | |
from infancy to the grave, that he's struggling in his soul. | 6:30 | |
Well, what I want to try to get across to you this morning, | 6:37 | |
is simply this, | 6:42 | |
that the Bible, which is one of the foundation pillars | 6:44 | |
of the Christian Church, | 6:48 | |
addresses itself directly to this situation, | 6:50 | |
in which man is placed, in which he is forever fighting | 6:55 | |
this warfare in the soul. | 7:00 | |
We too often misunderstand and mistake the biblical message. | 7:02 | |
We too often tend to think that the Bible, | 7:07 | |
which is the foundation pillar of the church's life | 7:10 | |
is a book about piety and divinity and heavenly things. | 7:13 | |
Whereas in all reality, | 7:18 | |
the Bible is a book addressed most specifically | 7:21 | |
to the concrete earthly situation where we live. | 7:25 | |
Speaking to us as we fight this lonely battle | 7:29 | |
in our own individual and personal hearts. | 7:33 | |
And we can never comprehend what the Bible is about | 7:36 | |
until we cease to think, as we have so often done | 7:40 | |
that the geographical frontiers of the Bible | 7:43 | |
are the Palestine of long ago and far away. | 7:46 | |
The true frontiers of the biblical message | 7:51 | |
are your heart and my heart this very morning | 7:54 | |
in this very of June in this very year of 1960. | 7:58 | |
The Bible in other words is as Skeapti Doug once said, | 8:04 | |
a letter with your address of pony. | 8:08 | |
In this way, the Bible speaks again very realistically | 8:14 | |
to certain phases of human existence. | 8:19 | |
It shows men engaged in this battle in the soul. | 8:23 | |
And what I want to do, is to select some of these phases | 8:29 | |
of human existence from the Old Testament first of all, | 8:33 | |
in order that you might see how to closely they are related | 8:37 | |
to man's situation today, | 8:42 | |
where he fights this battle of the heart. | 8:45 | |
The first phase of human existence | 8:49 | |
about which I want to speak, | 8:51 | |
taking it from the Old Testament, | 8:54 | |
is the phase at which men fondly believe | 8:56 | |
that in this battle of the heart, | 9:00 | |
they can win the victory for themselves. | 9:03 | |
That they can deliver themselves from evil, | 9:09 | |
by their own strength, | 9:12 | |
their own cleverness and their own ingenuity. | 9:13 | |
Throughout the long story of man, | 9:18 | |
this phase has been labeled humanism. | 9:20 | |
We find it spoken to most directly in that very vivid story, | 9:25 | |
which I read to you from the book of Genesis this morning, | 9:30 | |
the story of the Tower of Babel. | 9:33 | |
What is the profound and searching meaning of this story? | 9:37 | |
Here it is very dramatically interestingly told. | 9:41 | |
Here are men, and they're saying to each other, | 9:45 | |
"Come on boys, come on. We are so clever. | 9:47 | |
We can build a tower reaching up to heaven, | 9:50 | |
by our own skill and by our own strengths, | 9:53 | |
we know how to do it, we'll erect the kingdom of God. | 9:56 | |
We can do it by the skill of our own hands, | 9:59 | |
and the cleverness of our own minds." | 10:02 | |
And so you see them there concretely pictured | 10:05 | |
in the biblical mythological story. | 10:08 | |
You see them group together in a little huddle and say, | 10:10 | |
"How clever we are." | 10:13 | |
How clever man is, that he himself can take it upon himself | 10:16 | |
to build the kingdom of heaven. | 10:20 | |
This is the deep meaning of the Tower of Babel story, | 10:22 | |
and of course the sequel is, | 10:26 | |
that whenever man defies himself | 10:29 | |
and believes that on his own animal strength and cleverness, | 10:32 | |
he can erect the kingdom of heaven, | 10:36 | |
there follows only chaos and confusion | 10:38 | |
and suffering and tragedy. | 10:42 | |
And man's desperate fight in all the ages ever since, | 10:45 | |
has been his readiness to make himself a god. | 10:48 | |
You don't need to look far across this stricken earth today, | 10:55 | |
to see that this is still our darkest predicament, | 11:00 | |
that men in places are still trusting | 11:03 | |
in their proud imperialistic path, | 11:06 | |
they are still thinking that they are gods. | 11:09 | |
This is what is wrong with the world of our time. | 11:12 | |
As it always has been wrong with man's world. | 11:15 | |
This is humanism at its works. | 11:18 | |
In a fascinating novel called "The Forerunner," | 11:21 | |
Merejkowski, bases his story | 11:25 | |
on the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci. | 11:29 | |
And it's a wonderful story this, | 11:33 | |
because it shows that man's plight | 11:35 | |
and the battle in man's heart is really this. | 11:39 | |
It's the struggle between God become man in Jesus Christ, | 11:43 | |
and on the other hand, | 11:49 | |
man become God through his own fight. | 11:52 | |
And that is always man's situation. | 11:56 | |
This battle that goes on in the souls of men | 12:00 | |
is the battle between God's attempt | 12:03 | |
to break through to him in Christ, | 12:05 | |
and on the other hand, man's desire | 12:07 | |
to make himself a god and say, | 12:11 | |
"I am stronger than Christ. I am stronger than God. | 12:12 | |
I can build a tower myself reaching unto heaven." | 12:16 | |
There are particular epochs in human history, | 12:21 | |
in which this kind of proud pretentiousness on man's part | 12:25 | |
has led to untold suffering. | 12:30 | |
There are times too, when man has fondly dreamed | 12:34 | |
that he has it in his own power | 12:39 | |
to win victory in the battle of the heart. | 12:40 | |
You remember the kind of naive optimism | 12:43 | |
of the late Victorian era | 12:46 | |
about which you possibly have read, | 12:49 | |
when men were feeling that the human race | 12:52 | |
was standing on an escalator, | 12:55 | |
and it was simply a matter of bidding time, | 12:57 | |
until we moved up and up to the perfect day of God | 13:00 | |
and everything would be peace | 13:04 | |
and a dreamland of wonder and glory and love. | 13:06 | |
Tennyson said, in those days, | 13:12 | |
"Yet I doubt not through the ages, | 13:13 | |
one increasing purpose runs | 13:16 | |
and the thoughts of men are widened | 13:18 | |
with the process of the suns." | 13:20 | |
Or it was just a matter of waiting, | 13:23 | |
and everything in the garden of the world would be lovely. | 13:25 | |
Swinburne said at this time, | 13:30 | |
"Glory to man in the highest, | 13:32 | |
for man is the master of thing." | 13:34 | |
And again in our day, there has appeared in human life | 13:39 | |
what we call scientific humanism, | 13:44 | |
in which man again is trusting in his technological skill | 13:48 | |
to win the battle of the soul, to erect the kingdom of God. | 13:52 | |
Do you think that any good thing | 13:57 | |
can come out of Cape Canaveral? | 13:59 | |
Men do. | 14:03 | |
Men fondly believe still | 14:04 | |
that what we need to save the world | 14:07 | |
is greater technological skill, | 14:09 | |
greater scientific progress than ever before. | 14:12 | |
This is scientific humanism at its most sinister. | 14:16 | |
The notion then is still with us | 14:20 | |
that we can erect the kingdom of heaven, | 14:22 | |
by defying ourselves, | 14:25 | |
by usurping the place of the creator God, we can do it. | 14:29 | |
We have the cleverness, we have the skill, | 14:34 | |
we have the knowledge. | 14:37 | |
And this is at the root of every predicament | 14:38 | |
across the world today. | 14:42 | |
Now specifically, the sad thing | 14:46 | |
about this phase of human existence | 14:49 | |
in which man put so much pride in himself | 14:51 | |
and in his own achievement, | 14:54 | |
you know it finds its way even into the Christian church. | 14:56 | |
There where most of all man should recognize | 15:01 | |
his utter dependence upon the great creator God. | 15:04 | |
There where he should be praying to God | 15:08 | |
for the power to make men free | 15:11 | |
and to make the world a lovely and a better place, | 15:13 | |
there man is still trusting in himself. | 15:16 | |
Isn't it true that the church is often today | 15:20 | |
so secularized in places | 15:23 | |
that it has become competitive big business? | 15:26 | |
Isn't it true that there are so many in the church | 15:30 | |
who think that the church is to be measured | 15:34 | |
by its numerical strength or by its financial statistics? | 15:36 | |
Isn't it true that the church is pushing on | 15:40 | |
at a humanistic level, seeking to make itself great | 15:43 | |
as an earthly institution, | 15:47 | |
when in fact by this kind of humanistic pushing, | 15:50 | |
it is more and more cutting itself off | 15:53 | |
from the inflow of the divine energy of the Almighty God, | 15:56 | |
and is more and more seeking to be truly | 16:00 | |
the church of Christ. | 16:03 | |
We better pause a while when we worship in the church | 16:06 | |
these days, and recognize who's we are, | 16:09 | |
and whom we seek to serve. | 16:13 | |
And any church which has gone overboard, | 16:16 | |
or any denomination of the church, | 16:19 | |
which has gone overboard for sheer bigness, | 16:21 | |
and numerical strength, and financial power, | 16:24 | |
had better take stalk of its position. | 16:28 | |
For woe unto us, if humanism is found | 16:31 | |
even in the church of Christ. | 16:34 | |
That is one phase of man's existence then, | 16:37 | |
as he seeks to win this battle of the heart, | 16:40 | |
he fondly thinks he can do it on his own strength. | 16:43 | |
Another phase of man's existence, | 16:50 | |
which is very eloquently spoken to in the Old Testament, | 16:51 | |
is the phase at which he thinks | 16:55 | |
he can win the victory of life | 16:58 | |
by seeking to please the deity. | 17:00 | |
At this stage, he believes that there is an omnipotent God, | 17:03 | |
and he thinks he can become virtuous, | 17:07 | |
by seeking to please this God. | 17:10 | |
You know that in the Old Testament, | 17:13 | |
there is a great elaborate ritual of sacrifice. | 17:15 | |
Now at its best, the ritual of sacrifice | 17:20 | |
among the Hebrew people, was a genuine attempt | 17:23 | |
to equate themselves with the rams and the bullocks | 17:26 | |
that they offered. | 17:31 | |
They were seeking to say, "We are offering with these rams, | 17:32 | |
our own hearts and surrender to God and to his path." | 17:36 | |
But in reality at its worst, | 17:40 | |
the ritual of sacrifice in the Hebrew temple, | 17:42 | |
very often became a merely external thing. | 17:46 | |
And when men made an outward gift to God, | 17:50 | |
they very often said to themselves, | 17:52 | |
"Oh, well, I've pleased him now. | 17:54 | |
I've pleased the omnipotent power, I can feel good. | 17:57 | |
How victorious I am beginning to feel | 18:00 | |
in the battle of my soul." | 18:02 | |
There are maybe some offers here, | 18:05 | |
in fact all of us here, probably this morning, | 18:08 | |
who at some time have felt this | 18:10 | |
with a little parcel of the good works | 18:12 | |
we have done in our hand, | 18:15 | |
or making some financial offering to the church, | 18:17 | |
we say to ourselves, we please God, | 18:21 | |
we've sent up a sweet scent | 18:24 | |
in his nostrils and he's happy with us. | 18:26 | |
And I feel this day that he's giving me victory | 18:28 | |
in the battle of life. | 18:32 | |
The sacrificial cultures of the Old Testament | 18:34 | |
has its counter part again, in the modern church. | 18:38 | |
I was minister of a church in the city of Glasgow | 18:43 | |
in one of the loveliest suburbs in Scotland, | 18:46 | |
And in my church were many of the wealthy merchants | 18:49 | |
of the city. | 18:52 | |
It was always a tremendous trouble to my conscience | 18:53 | |
that a fairly large proportion of these merchant men | 18:58 | |
of the city of Glasgow never darkened the church door. | 19:02 | |
But from some of them at least, every six months, | 19:07 | |
there would come a fairly fat cheque | 19:11 | |
as a donation to the church. | 19:13 | |
What to do in this situation? | 19:17 | |
One had the feeling that these men | 19:21 | |
had some superstitious regard for the church, | 19:23 | |
that they made this donation every six months | 19:26 | |
out of this superstitious regard for the church. | 19:29 | |
Now one never knows utterly another man's motives. | 19:33 | |
They may have been perfectly sincere. | 19:36 | |
They may have believed with all their heart in God, | 19:39 | |
and in his church. | 19:42 | |
And with this cheque, they may have genuinely | 19:43 | |
been making an offering of themselves to God. | 19:46 | |
But one still has the lingering suspicion, | 19:49 | |
that they were simply buying themselves | 19:52 | |
a kind of insurance policy with the church and with God. | 19:56 | |
Is that too frank a statement? | 19:59 | |
I put it simply to you to ask it of yourself. | 20:03 | |
There is always the danger ever present in the church, | 20:08 | |
that as we fight this battle in our hearts, | 20:13 | |
we think we can win release and victory, | 20:16 | |
by pleasing God with= an external gift. | 20:18 | |
And of course, you know, | 20:22 | |
you cannot win victory in this way, | 20:23 | |
for the sacrifices God wants | 20:26 | |
are the sacrifices of a broken spirit | 20:29 | |
and a contrite heart, which is filled with love | 20:33 | |
for the Almighty and for all men. | 20:36 | |
There is another phase of human existence | 20:41 | |
spoken to very dramatically again | 20:45 | |
in the Old Testament, | 20:47 | |
which was part of the ritual of sacrifice, | 20:48 | |
and it too certainly has its modern counterpart | 20:51 | |
in the battle of our life. | 20:54 | |
There was the ancient device of the scape goat. | 20:56 | |
Once a year in the Hebrew temple, | 21:01 | |
the Old Testament people came to worship | 21:03 | |
and the high priest was present | 21:05 | |
and a goat was brought into the sanctuary | 21:08 | |
and the high priest ceremonially took the sins of the people | 21:13 | |
and he put them on the head of this goat, | 21:17 | |
and then the animal was led away ritually | 21:20 | |
into the wilderness, bearing the sins of the people with it. | 21:23 | |
And you can imagine how the congregation | 21:27 | |
then felt a sense of virtue within. | 21:29 | |
Our sins have been carried away by the scape goat. | 21:33 | |
They felt a sense no doubt, momentarily of victory. | 21:38 | |
Now this too has its modern counterpart | 21:42 | |
in the battle of our heart. | 21:46 | |
I'm willing to bet that there is no more familiar practice | 21:49 | |
we use than this, this device of the scape goat. | 21:52 | |
In other words, what we do is this. | 21:57 | |
We take our own failures in the battle of life. | 22:00 | |
We take our own moral weaknesses, | 22:04 | |
we take our own lack of love, | 22:06 | |
we take our own lack of redemptive concern | 22:09 | |
for our fellow men and women, | 22:12 | |
and we blame somebody else for it. | 22:13 | |
We put it onto somebody else's head. | 22:16 | |
We say, it's the age in which we live. | 22:19 | |
It's the environment in which we've been brought up. | 22:22 | |
It's hereditary. | 22:24 | |
We blame one thing and another, | 22:26 | |
we make somebody the scape goat for our own weakness | 22:27 | |
as we fight this battle of life. | 22:31 | |
Is that not true? | 22:33 | |
And we do this, not only as individuals, | 22:35 | |
we do it on the national level as well, | 22:37 | |
because you know, in Britain, in 1914 to 1918, | 22:39 | |
they were shouting, "Hang the Kaiser." | 22:43 | |
And the British people many of them, | 22:46 | |
fondly believed that when the Kaiser was hang, | 22:48 | |
evil would be broken forever, | 22:50 | |
and the kingdom of good would prevail. | 22:52 | |
And in the second world war, | 22:55 | |
we said again in Britain, "Shoot Hitler." | 22:56 | |
And we finally believed that if we were rid of Hitler, | 22:59 | |
the perfect day would have come. | 23:02 | |
We blame everybody on the national level, | 23:04 | |
we disclaim responsibility for ourselves. | 23:07 | |
And as Reinhold Niebuhr has pointed out very vividly, | 23:11 | |
there is a tendency in American life today | 23:14 | |
to believe that if communism were rooted out of the world, | 23:17 | |
everything would be good and blessed and healthy. | 23:21 | |
Stand upon nine feet or son of man, | 23:26 | |
and search your own heart. | 23:30 | |
For we too, are responsible for the world's guilt | 23:32 | |
and suffering and evil and sorrow. | 23:35 | |
We cannot entirely make other people, | 23:38 | |
another nation a scape goat, | 23:42 | |
for what we make of the battle of life. | 23:45 | |
There is no release and no victory in this way. | 23:48 | |
No more at the individual level, none at the national level. | 23:52 | |
I have two boys, aged 12 and 13, Gordon and Kenneth. | 23:56 | |
When Gordon commits some misdemeanor, | 24:00 | |
the inevitable thing for him to say is, | 24:03 | |
"Kenneth did it, dad." | 24:06 | |
When Kenneth commits some misdemeanor, | 24:08 | |
the inevitable thing for him to say, | 24:10 | |
because he's human is, | 24:12 | |
"Gordon did it, dad." | 24:14 | |
They make each other a kind of scapegoat. | 24:16 | |
They disclaim responsibility when things go wrong, | 24:19 | |
puts the father in a predicament. | 24:22 | |
The only way out perhaps, | 24:24 | |
is in every occasion to punish both, I don't know. | 24:25 | |
It may be. | 24:29 | |
But in all events, | 24:32 | |
this device of the scapegoat is with us from early youth | 24:34 | |
through all the days of our life. | 24:38 | |
We like to blame somebody else. | 24:42 | |
In the slums of Glasgow, I've heard a man say, | 24:45 | |
because he was living a debouched life, | 24:50 | |
I've heard him say, " I never had a chance. | 24:53 | |
My father before me was a drunkard. It's just heredity. | 24:57 | |
I can't help what I've made of my life." | 25:01 | |
I don't believe that's true. | 25:05 | |
I reckon that what James Daniel, | 25:08 | |
Scottish theologian said is correct. | 25:10 | |
"No man ever with a clear conscience, | 25:13 | |
set his own failure down to his father's account." | 25:16 | |
I've heard man say equally, | 25:22 | |
"I've never had a chance in life. | 25:24 | |
It's the system, it's the day in which I live." | 25:26 | |
Oh, but on the other hand too, that isn't true, | 25:29 | |
for I've seen people born and raised | 25:33 | |
in the slum districts of Glasgow, | 25:36 | |
and these are among west slums in Europe. | 25:38 | |
I've seen them brought up raised in such a place | 25:41 | |
living good and gallant and noble and Christ like lives. | 25:45 | |
So the other fellow can't blame his failure | 25:50 | |
on his environment. | 25:52 | |
We live in an age in which psychologically speaking, | 25:56 | |
there are many who are trying to tell us | 25:59 | |
that our life is predetermined. | 26:01 | |
There may be some truth in it, but I don't think it is. | 26:04 | |
I think we fight our battle in the heart alone, | 26:07 | |
that we are directly responsible in our freedom | 26:11 | |
for what we are, for as the poet puts it, | 26:14 | |
"When the soul arms for battle, she goes forward alone." | 26:17 | |
And in our heart of hearts, we know this morning, | 26:22 | |
that if we have had failures in our life, | 26:25 | |
it's been our responsibility. | 26:28 | |
If we've had weaknesses, then it's been our doing. | 26:31 | |
Don't make a scapegoat of anyone or anything else. | 26:36 | |
You cannot win victory in the battle of a soul in that way. | 26:40 | |
Then there is this last phase of human existence | 26:44 | |
spoken to in the Old Testament, | 26:49 | |
about which I want to tell you briefly, | 26:50 | |
it's a higher one than all these. | 26:53 | |
And it's relevant to our time too. | 26:56 | |
The greatest thinkers | 26:59 | |
and the greatest minds of the Old Testament, | 27:02 | |
are of course the prophets of Israel, | 27:04 | |
these men of God who believed in God with all their heart, | 27:08 | |
who stood in the inner council of God and knew his secret. | 27:12 | |
And these men proclaim a great hope. | 27:18 | |
They study this battle in the human soul, | 27:23 | |
and they proclaim with all other and enthusiasm, | 27:26 | |
on God's great day in the future, | 27:31 | |
he will break into save men. | 27:34 | |
To give them victory in this battle, | 27:37 | |
which everyone has to fight. | 27:39 | |
Now the prophet are wonderful, | 27:42 | |
because they are filled with this glowing expectation | 27:44 | |
that someday God will send his servant | 27:48 | |
to cleanse men from their sin, | 27:51 | |
to make them good and victorious in the battle of life. | 27:54 | |
But I want you to notice, | 27:58 | |
that for all the greatness of the Old Testament, | 28:00 | |
for all its beauty, | 28:03 | |
it is still a hope that man will win victory | 28:05 | |
in the battle of the heart. | 28:10 | |
It's still just a lovely hope. | 28:11 | |
It's in the future. | 28:14 | |
The future tense is used. | 28:15 | |
I want to say now, that if the Old Testament, | 28:18 | |
which describes so vividly | 28:23 | |
these certain phases of human existence in every age, | 28:25 | |
if the Old Testament were all we had, | 28:29 | |
life would look like a losing battle. | 28:32 | |
We'd have hoped certainly, | 28:36 | |
we'd have some secrets as to how to proceed, | 28:38 | |
but the Hosannas of victory have not yet sounded in the air. | 28:41 | |
Oh, but praise be to God, | 28:46 | |
praise be to go God. | 28:49 | |
The Old Testament isn't all that the Christian Church has. | 28:51 | |
The Old Testament is superseded and surpassed | 28:55 | |
by God's declaration of himself in Christ, | 28:59 | |
recorded in the New Testament. | 29:02 | |
And in the New Testament, | 29:04 | |
it isn't the past or future tense that's used, | 29:05 | |
it's the glowing vivid present, | 29:08 | |
of present victory in men's hearts | 29:10 | |
and in the battle of their lives. | 29:13 | |
If anything stands out above anything else | 29:15 | |
in the New Testament is simply this, | 29:19 | |
that these men who had experience God in Jesus Christ, | 29:21 | |
these men who had handled with their own hands | 29:27 | |
the word of life in Christ, were conscious, | 29:30 | |
were profoundly aware | 29:34 | |
of an amazing, an unbelievable power in their hearts, | 29:37 | |
that made them strong, where they had been weak. | 29:42 | |
That gave them courage, where they had been fearful. | 29:45 | |
That took the sting out of death itself, | 29:49 | |
so that all through the New Testament, | 29:51 | |
the note of triumph reverberates again and again. | 29:54 | |
We are more than conquerors, says the apostle through Christ | 29:57 | |
who loved us and gave himself for us. | 30:01 | |
Victory is in the air now, | 30:04 | |
because God has sent his power into his men's heart | 30:05 | |
in his son, Jesus, the Christ. | 30:09 | |
I cannot explain to you how it is, | 30:13 | |
that in this strange lonely battle, | 30:16 | |
which all of us have to fight, Christ brings power. | 30:19 | |
I can only say that it's true, that it works, | 30:23 | |
that it has worked for some of us, | 30:27 | |
who didn't believe it possible, | 30:29 | |
That out of ugliness and unattractiveness, | 30:32 | |
God in Christ has brought something more winsome, | 30:34 | |
and more lovely. | 30:38 | |
There is no rationale for the invasion of men's hearts | 30:40 | |
by God in Jesus Christ, we cannot explain it, | 30:46 | |
we can only testify out of our own life's experience | 30:49 | |
that when some of us have beheld the glory of God | 30:54 | |
in the face of Jesus Christ, | 30:57 | |
we have been conscious of victory in our souls. | 31:00 | |
We know that this battle that we are fighting then | 31:04 | |
is not a losing battle. | 31:06 | |
That victory comes from the beyond through God in Christ, | 31:08 | |
that he does for us in this Christ, | 31:12 | |
what we cannot do for ourselves. | 31:14 | |
I say I cannot explain it to you. | 31:18 | |
I can only tell you a story which was passed on to me | 31:20 | |
by my own teacher of very revered memory, Dr. A.J. Gasip. | 31:25 | |
He was a chaplain in the first world war. | 31:29 | |
And he used to tell us who were his students | 31:33 | |
that one day he went far out on the duck board track up | 31:36 | |
towards Passiondale in Flanders. | 31:41 | |
It had been a day of particularly heavy shell fire, | 31:44 | |
and many young Scotsmen laid dead on the battlefield | 31:47 | |
in no man's land. | 31:51 | |
And then suddenly as he walked about among the corpses, | 31:54 | |
he came across one, particularly youthful fellow, | 31:57 | |
lying dead on the battlefield. | 32:02 | |
He had flax and curly hair, | 32:05 | |
and a most attractive rugged Scottish face. | 32:07 | |
And Gasip looking at him, | 32:10 | |
just suddenly thought how | 32:12 | |
some mother's heart back home in Scotland | 32:15 | |
would be completely shattered and broken. | 32:18 | |
And kneeling down beside this boy, | 32:21 | |
he took off his Scottish bow model, | 32:24 | |
and laid it on the ground. | 32:27 | |
And kneeling down beside the dear dead boy, | 32:29 | |
he looked him in the face and said, | 32:32 | |
"Because you've done this my son, | 32:35 | |
I promise for the rest of my life, | 32:38 | |
to try to be a better man." | 32:41 | |
There are some of us who have now gone | 32:46 | |
beside the cross of Christ, | 32:49 | |
which God has sent for our salvation. | 32:51 | |
And we've taken off our bonnets and we've said, | 32:55 | |
because the son of God has done | 32:58 | |
this precious and amazing thing, | 33:01 | |
we promise to be better men and women. | 33:04 | |
No one can explain this, | 33:09 | |
we can only say that through the Christian centuries, | 33:12 | |
wherever the cross has truly confronted men, | 33:15 | |
it has been a power for good, | 33:19 | |
in the battle of the human soul. | 33:21 | |
It has been as if the holy army of God himself | 33:24 | |
were invading their hearts | 33:28 | |
to make them strong to fight. | 33:30 | |
To fight a good fight at last, | 33:33 | |
not on their own human power which is weak enough at best, | 33:35 | |
but on the very power of very God himself. | 33:39 | |
So men and women, I have tried in a very faltering | 33:44 | |
and incoherent way, to sum up something | 33:48 | |
of the biblical messages relevance to our situation. | 33:51 | |
We are fighting this battle today | 33:56 | |
in the soul, all over the world. | 33:58 | |
As we have fought it for generations and for centuries. | 34:00 | |
I still believe with all my heart | 34:04 | |
that because Christ can work miracles | 34:06 | |
in the lives of individual men, | 34:09 | |
he can work miracles in the lives of all men, | 34:12 | |
all over the world. | 34:15 | |
He is the one to deliver, in the battle of the human heart. | 34:17 | |
So when we pray, "Deliver us from evil," | 34:23 | |
let us have in our hearts, the firm unshakeable conviction, | 34:27 | |
that Christ is in fact, the strong deliverer. | 34:32 | |
And if we open up our lives to him in the fullest way, | 34:37 | |
he can make us great where we have been little, | 34:41 | |
strong where we have been weak, | 34:45 | |
and triumphant in life's battle, | 34:47 | |
where we have been defeated. | 34:50 | |
And unto this strong conqueror, even Jesus Christ, | 34:53 | |
whom God has sent to make us great, | 34:57 | |
unto him the honor and glory | 35:01 | |
majesty, dominion and power world without end. | 35:04 | |
Amen. | 35:10 | |
Would you please stand for the Benediction. | 35:14 | |
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, | 35:22 | |
and the love of God, | 35:25 | |
and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you, | 35:27 | |
now, henceforth and forevermore. | 35:31 | |
(tender worship music) | 35:36 | |
(church bell ringing) | 36:01 | |
(bright worship music) | 36:13 | |
Is that the church reports it sees, | 36:22 | |
when it looks at the world. | 36:25 | |
For the church, the worldwide church, | 36:28 | |
we call it the ecumenical church. | 36:31 | |
Is standing at the point of view of Jesus Christ, | 36:36 | |
when it looks at the world. | 36:41 | |
And this accounts for the fact | 36:43 | |
that it reports seeing different things | 36:45 | |
than secularistic groups report seeing, | 36:48 | |
when they look at the world. | 36:52 | |
Some people say when they read church pronouncements, | 36:56 | |
when they're in services of worship like this, | 37:00 | |
and participate in the prayers | 37:02 | |
that have been written by our student leaders of the world, | 37:04 | |
why is it that the church says what it says, | 37:07 | |
and seems to see what it sees? | 37:11 | |
Why when I look at the world, I don't see these things? | 37:14 | |
The explanation is, | 37:18 | |
the church is trying to look at the world | 37:20 | |
through the eyes of its Lord, Jesus Christ. | 37:22 | |
The church sees at least three things, | 37:28 | |
when it looks at the world. | 37:31 | |
First, it sees the world. | 37:32 | |
This may sound obvious, it is not. | 37:37 | |
When the church looks at the world, it does not see nations. | 37:42 | |
It does not see social groups, | 37:47 | |
strata of society. | 37:51 | |
It does not see men cut up into partitions here | 37:54 | |
and partitions there. | 37:58 | |
It's sees a world of people | 37:59 | |
divided into only two groups. | 38:02 | |
The first group | 38:06 | |
is composed of those who have made a positive response | 38:07 | |
in faith and love, obedience and service | 38:12 | |
to the call of God, to all men in his son, Jesus Christ. | 38:16 | |
That's the first group the church sees, | 38:23 | |
because that is the church. | 38:25 | |
The second group, | 38:28 | |
and the only remaining people in the world | 38:30 | |
as the church views it, | 38:32 | |
are those who have not made this positive response | 38:34 | |
in faith and love, obedience, and service, | 38:38 | |
to what God has called us to do in his son Jesus Christ. | 38:43 | |
Two groups. | 38:48 | |
Only two groups. | 38:51 | |
The church is color blind, to any other division. | 38:53 | |
It does not see people as states or as nations. | 38:57 | |
It seems peculiarly unable to recognize those divisions. | 39:02 | |
Now, what is the practical significance of this? | 39:10 | |
Let us see what the practical significance of it would be. | 39:14 | |
Right now in this service of worship here, | 39:18 | |
at Duke University, in this chapel, | 39:21 | |
who are the people who belong to this congregation, | 39:25 | |
and who are the people who are visitors or guests | 39:30 | |
in this service of worship? | 39:35 | |
The people who belong fully, completely | 39:40 | |
without any reservation, | 39:44 | |
to this congregation, | 39:47 | |
are the people whoever they may be, | 39:51 | |
who have made and are making this commitment | 39:54 | |
to our Lord Jesus Christ. | 39:59 | |
The people who are strangers and visitors, | 40:03 | |
guests in this service, | 40:07 | |
are those people wherever they came from, | 40:11 | |
who have not made a commitment to Christ. | 40:15 | |
This would mean that Phil Stevens of New York, | 40:19 | |
would be as much at home in this service, | 40:25 | |
as Dave Sims of Georgia or Tom Vernon of Florida. | 40:27 | |
That Louis Tuckey of Texas would be as much at home | 40:35 | |
in this service, and as much a part of it, | 40:38 | |
as Betty Brinkley of North Carolina. | 40:41 | |
It would mean not only that state groups | 40:45 | |
are irrelevant in this congregation, | 40:48 | |
but that levels of vocation or calling would be irrelevant. | 40:51 | |
So that Eddie Rashton, a law student, | 40:59 | |
would take communion in the same pew | 41:02 | |
with the medical student, Warner Hall. | 41:05 | |
And there would be no difference. | 41:08 | |
The church recognizes no such significant differences. | 41:10 | |
These things are as it were, irrelevant, | 41:14 | |
when we come together for corporate worship of God | 41:17 | |
and love of Christ, | 41:20 | |
and to grow in the grace of our master. | 41:22 | |
Well, not only is this true in the United States | 41:27 | |
that in Christ there is no east or west, | 41:30 | |
in him, no south or north. | 41:33 | |
But it is true beyond state lines, | 41:36 | |
across national boundaries. | 41:39 | |
Continuing to answer the question, | 41:43 | |
who are the people who are fully a part | 41:45 | |
of this congregation and who are those who are guests. | 41:48 | |
We would say that Danny Eric Chio | 41:53 | |
of the Philippines is completely | 41:56 | |
a part of this congregation. | 41:58 | |
We would say that Steve Powell of Burma, | 42:01 | |
Gazi Cuban of Jordan, | 42:05 | |
John Thomas of Canada, | 42:07 | |
Thor Hall of Norway, | 42:08 | |
Peri Zabul of Hungary. | 42:11 | |
These are the people who are members fully | 42:13 | |
of this body of Christ, | 42:16 | |
this expression of the church here, | 42:18 | |
and the man who was born five blocks away in Durham, | 42:22 | |
but who has not responded in faith and obedience to Christ | 42:28 | |
is an outsider in this congregation. | 42:32 | |
And the mere of fact that this chapel is located | 42:36 | |
in a nation we call the United States is irrelevant, | 42:38 | |
when you are considering the nature of the church. | 42:43 | |
When the church looks at the world, | 42:48 | |
it does not see any national boundaries. | 42:50 | |
It sees only those who have so said yes to God, | 42:52 | |
and those who have not said yes to God. | 42:56 | |
And this determines therefore, the mission of the church. | 42:59 | |
The church, which has responded to Christ has one mission. | 43:03 | |
And that is to bear witness to those who have not responded, | 43:07 | |
bear witness to the love of God in Christ for all men, | 43:13 | |
and the call of God through Christ to all men. | 43:16 | |
And that mission is one and the same, | 43:19 | |
whether it be to that man in Durham, | 43:21 | |
who was born five blocks from here, | 43:23 | |
but who has span Christ, | 43:25 | |
or that man in Uganda, who has never heard of him. | 43:27 | |
The mission is one and the same. | 43:32 | |
It is essentially a proclamation | 43:35 | |
of the love of God in Christ. | 43:36 | |
And when the church looks at the world, that's what it sees. | 43:39 | |
The church sees a second thing, when it looks at the world. | 43:44 | |
It sees persons, as opposed to profits, | 43:47 | |
or any material consideration. | 43:52 | |
Now this runs contrary | 43:57 | |
to much of what the world thinks | 44:00 | |
when it thinks about itself. | 44:04 | |
Hard-headed, | 44:08 | |
cold-hearted, | 44:09 | |
sharp driving businessmen, | 44:13 | |
When they look at the world, see profits or lawsuits. | 44:16 | |
When they look at an industry, | 44:20 | |
they see the profits in the industry. | 44:22 | |
The church when it looks at that industry, | 44:24 | |
sees not basically the profit, but the person. | 44:26 | |
The church asks not what is happening | 44:31 | |
to the balance sheet, | 44:34 | |
but what is happening to the people | 44:36 | |
who are involved in it and affected by it. | 44:38 | |
So that let us say here is a non-Christian, | 44:43 | |
or an un-Christian man who has | 44:46 | |
an interest financially in a coal mine. | 44:48 | |
When he looks at that operation, he asks, | 44:51 | |
what is the profit. | 44:54 | |
When the church looks at that operation, | 44:56 | |
it asks, what is happening to the persons | 44:57 | |
who go down into the ground? | 44:59 | |
What is happening to their families? | 45:01 | |
Basically the church sees persons, | 45:07 | |
when it looks at the world. | 45:11 | |
And those who resist the Christian revelation, | 45:13 | |
look at profit. | 45:17 | |
In the fourth dynasty in Egypt, | 45:22 | |
the great pyramid was built. | 45:26 | |
And the historian Herodotus tells us | 45:29 | |
that over 100,000 men were involved in the building of this, | 45:31 | |
and many of them lost their lives, | 45:37 | |
or were maimed or injured for life, in this operation. | 45:39 | |
When the Pharaoh looked, he saw a pyramid, | 45:45 | |
he didn't care about what happened to 100,000 persons, | 45:49 | |
but the church looking back upon that operation | 45:53 | |
considers that the greatest, | 45:57 | |
the most significant factor involved, | 45:58 | |
was what happened to the people, not the pyramid. | 46:00 | |
Always the church sees persons. | 46:06 | |
You have stock in a great distillery, | 46:12 | |
you may be interested mainly | 46:15 | |
in whether it is making a profit, | 46:17 | |
and if so into how many millions of dollars | 46:19 | |
that profit may run. | 46:22 | |
The church when it looks at it, | 46:24 | |
wants to know what is happening to the people | 46:26 | |
whose lives are affected. | 46:29 | |
Always the church in industry, in athletics, | 46:31 | |
in social clubs, | 46:36 | |
in every dimension of life, is looking at the people. | 46:39 | |
Or the church is looking at the world | 46:46 | |
from the standpoint of Jesus Christ. | 46:49 | |
And it seems strangely unable to get really interested | 46:53 | |
in any other consideration. | 46:59 | |
Last in distinction from others, | 47:04 | |
the church when it looks at the world, sees hope. | 47:07 | |
Many other people can look at the same phenomenon | 47:10 | |
that the church is looking at, | 47:14 | |
and see despair and defeat and frustration. | 47:16 | |
But the church will always be able to see hope. | 47:19 | |
Not because the church is a Pollyanna. | 47:24 | |
Not because the church denies | 47:29 | |
any of the tragic realities of human existence in sin, | 47:31 | |
but because the church | 47:36 | |
has been given by God, | 47:40 | |
is being redeemed by God, | 47:43 | |
and is undergirded by God. | 47:45 | |
And it stands on the promise | 47:48 | |
that the gates of hell cannot prevail against it. | 47:51 | |
So the church sees hope, | 47:56 | |
because it has faith in the ground of hope, | 47:58 | |
who is Jesus Christ, the son of God. | 48:01 | |
And it always believes in the possibility | 48:05 | |
of resurrection, wherever there is a crucifixion. | 48:08 | |
And so it keeps on patiently plugging away. | 48:13 | |
There are some who have accepted defeatism, | 48:18 | |
when they have read history and have seen | 48:21 | |
how one war happens, and another war happens, | 48:23 | |
and another war comes and there is destruction | 48:27 | |
and more destruction. | 48:29 | |
And they have seen this piling up until finally they say, | 48:31 | |
now we have reached a point in history | 48:34 | |
where man will destroy himself, and there is no hope. | 48:37 | |
Let us therefore eat, drink and be merry | 48:40 | |
for tomorrow we all die. | 48:42 | |
Such cynicism and frustration | 48:45 | |
is the inevitable conclusion | 48:48 | |
of those who= will not stand where Jesus stands, | 48:50 | |
and look as the church does, through his eyes. | 48:54 | |
See that even if man does bring himself | 48:59 | |
to the ultimate catastrophe on earth, | 49:02 | |
nothing that Christ has redeemed will ever be lost. | 49:06 | |
Because the end of history, | 49:11 | |
is not the end of the power of God. | 49:14 | |
And the end of the human life of any individual | 49:17 | |
is not the end Of his complete life. | 49:19 | |
For God has given us immortality through Christ. | 49:24 | |
And every good thing that has been done here, | 49:28 | |
will be retained and glorified in his ultimate kingdom. | 49:33 | |
So we work desperately as Christians | 49:39 | |
for the redemption of society about us, now in this world, | 49:42 | |
but we know that should the worst happen here, | 49:46 | |
nothing good that we have given ourselves to, | 49:51 | |
will be useless. | 49:56 | |
Now you see how different this is | 49:58 | |
from the person who is not looking at the world. | 50:00 | |
As the church is through the eyes of Christ. | 50:03 | |
He builds a house of fire burns it down, | 50:07 | |
he has therefore sustained a great loss, hasn't he? | 50:09 | |
He marries someone he loves and she dies. | 50:13 | |
This is a permanent loss, isn't it? | 50:16 | |
He works for peace and war comes, | 50:21 | |
and he says, "What's the use?" | 50:23 | |
He builds and he sees it torn down. | 50:26 | |
He develops his muscles, but old age overtakes him. | 50:31 | |
And finally death. | 50:35 | |
Hope is possible really, only to those who stand | 50:38 | |
where Christ stands, | 50:43 | |
and who look as the church does beyond history. | 50:45 | |
To the Lord of history and to his long range plans. | 50:50 | |
Yes, the church is looking at the world. | 50:57 | |
And what it sees is determined by where it stands | 51:00 | |
when it does its looking. | 51:05 | |
It sees a world, not all cut up by artificial barriers, | 51:07 | |
but a world of individuals, | 51:13 | |
just like we have gathered here today, | 51:15 | |
who are divided two ways. | 51:18 | |
Those who have responded to Christ, | 51:20 | |
and those who are yet to respond. | 51:23 | |
It sees people, not material considerations | 51:27 | |
like profits, pyramids, or anything else. | 51:31 | |
And it sees hope. | 51:34 | |
Not a shallow hope, | 51:37 | |
but an abiding eternal hope, | 51:39 | |
that can make it possible for us | 51:42 | |
to live joyously and triumphantly, | 51:45 | |
in every consideration. | 51:48 | |
Let us bow our heads for prayer. | 51:50 | |
Infinite and eternal God, | 51:53 | |
we thank thee for the life, | 51:55 | |
which has been given to us through thy son, Jesus Christ. | 51:58 | |
We thank thee for the opportunity we have, | 52:02 | |
every one of us, | 52:05 | |
to respond in joyous love and obedience to Christ. | 52:06 | |
And just now in this moment, | 52:12 | |
We say to him, | 52:16 | |
that we give him our hearts. | 52:20 | |
And we join our hearts in prayer, | 52:23 | |
with others of every land, | 52:26 | |
in the name of Christ. | 52:30 | |
Amen. | 52:32 | |
(tender worship music) | 52:38 |
- | Pythagoras, the philosopher and poet of ancient Greece, | 0:15 |
looked out of upon the world of his day | 0:22 | |
and gave expression to a sentiment with which you and I | 0:25 | |
could not possibly quarrel after these more than 2000 years. | 0:28 | |
Said he, the whole world is in a state of flux or change. | 0:35 | |
Certainly whatever other expression we use | 0:44 | |
to characterize our world today, | 0:47 | |
we say that it is a world of change. | 0:52 | |
I suppose, the philosopher of long ago, | 0:56 | |
was thinking primarily in terms of those things | 1:00 | |
which kaleidoscopically appeared before his eyes. | 1:03 | |
The seasons that come and go. | 1:08 | |
Springtime with its fresh rains, its flowering hillsides. | 1:11 | |
The smell of rich, turned over soil. | 1:18 | |
Summertime with its hot sun. | 1:22 | |
With its growing fields, it's full dress parade | 1:26 | |
of loveliness everywhere. | 1:29 | |
And then the fall of the year, which for many of us, | 1:33 | |
is the most wonderful of all. | 1:37 | |
Where the kaleidoscopic colors are spread | 1:41 | |
like a magic carpet over the entire earth. | 1:44 | |
Yellows and gold, browns and reds, mingle together, | 1:48 | |
in ravishing profusion. | 1:52 | |
All the wintertime with its biting cold, | 1:56 | |
its snow and its ice and sleep. | 2:00 | |
All of these are part of the most obvious aspect | 2:06 | |
of the changing world, | 2:10 | |
which a philosopher of long ago observed | 2:13 | |
and which is so commonplace to us today. | 2:15 | |
One thinks likewise of geographical changes, | 2:21 | |
which through these centuries, | 2:25 | |
have characterized our life. | 2:26 | |
Just a mile and a half from I was born | 2:29 | |
in the little land of Korea, | 2:32 | |
an Iron curtain has come down | 2:35 | |
and it has just as effectively separated | 2:39 | |
the peoples of the north from those of the south | 2:41 | |
in this little land, | 2:45 | |
as though the Iron Curtain itself were real. | 2:47 | |
The geographies which we study | 2:52 | |
have become increasingly larger. | 2:55 | |
And the pages of our history books have extended themselves. | 2:59 | |
Because as a result of the hates and the misunderstandings, | 3:05 | |
the tragedies of life, | 3:10 | |
these geographical changes have had to be reckoned with. | 3:13 | |
The conference is going on in Europe today, | 3:20 | |
in order to attend some delusion. | 3:23 | |
The geographical changes which took place some years ago, | 3:27 | |
in the land of Germany. | 3:32 | |
These are the common places with which through these years, | 3:35 | |
the people of mankind have learned to live. | 3:41 | |
One thinks again about the changes of the pace | 3:45 | |
at which we go. | 3:48 | |
When King David and the long ago | 3:51 | |
wished to learn of the tide in battle, | 3:53 | |
he had to await the arrival of a runner | 3:56 | |
across the rugged hills of Palestine. | 3:59 | |
Sometimes he fell exhausted upon the palace steps | 4:03 | |
and blurted out his story. | 4:06 | |
But even so the King must have realized | 4:09 | |
that this story, which had taken some time in the bringing, | 4:14 | |
was now already old. | 4:20 | |
The Indians I suppose, were better with their smoke signals, | 4:25 | |
which carried their messages | 4:30 | |
from one mountain peak to another. | 4:31 | |
Or the Africans with the beat of the TomTom, | 4:35 | |
whose sound was carried from one valley to the next, | 4:39 | |
or even Paul Revere riding through the night | 4:44 | |
to give warning of the impending approach of the enemy. | 4:48 | |
Today, we look up into the heavens | 4:53 | |
and we see the jet planes | 4:56 | |
that travel with super sonic speed, | 4:59 | |
bleed their vapor trails in a crisscross pattern | 5:03 | |
over the whole earth. | 5:07 | |
And when we think of missiles and rocket shifts, | 5:09 | |
we can only begin to imagine what tomorrow will bring, | 5:13 | |
in these changes of the pace at which we go. | 5:17 | |
One thinks of the changes in the world of knowledge | 5:23 | |
in so many areas, we can only be briefly illustrative. | 5:26 | |
When I was a youngster growing up in Korea, | 5:32 | |
I used to see the little medicine shops, | 5:36 | |
and I can picture them in my mind yes, | 5:40 | |
the little white bags, myriads of them, | 5:43 | |
suspended from the ceiling of the room. | 5:46 | |
Huge Chinese characters on the outside, | 5:50 | |
designating the herbs that had with painstaking care, | 5:53 | |
been gathered and dried | 5:58 | |
and put within the bags for future use. | 6:00 | |
These were the herbs with which for many centuries | 6:04 | |
the peoples of this far away land had made the concoctions | 6:08 | |
with which they strove against the ravages of disease. | 6:13 | |
How futile and sometimes ineffective they were, | 6:18 | |
is brought out by a saying, which to this day, | 6:22 | |
has come down in this little land and goes like this, | 6:26 | |
"We do not count our children | 6:31 | |
until after they have had smallpox." | 6:34 | |
So inevitable did it seem | 6:39 | |
that the scourge should enter the life of every home, | 6:41 | |
they were not sure who the survivors would be | 6:45 | |
until the disease had taken its toll. | 6:49 | |
What the far cry our life is today from this, | 6:53 | |
with our sulfurs and penicillin's and mycins. | 6:57 | |
Those who are at work in the laboratories of the world | 7:02 | |
are producing yet further medicines | 7:06 | |
that will in time to come, push back the barriers, | 7:10 | |
so that diseases will be conquered. | 7:16 | |
Or again, one thinks about the ancient mariner, | 7:21 | |
who feared to venture too far off to sea, | 7:25 | |
lest he should topple off the rim of the earth. | 7:30 | |
Today through the eyes of a 200 inch telescope, | 7:34 | |
we look out into the vastness of a universe | 7:38 | |
that we can, with our puny minds, | 7:42 | |
scarcely begin to describe. | 7:46 | |
And it is not inconceivable | 7:49 | |
that discoveries in the life that is yet to be, | 7:52 | |
will bring to us even larger realizations of the vastness | 7:57 | |
of this universe in which you and I live. | 8:04 | |
Change is all about us. | 8:08 | |
Change is in the faces of people whom we know. | 8:11 | |
Change is in our surroundings, in campus life, | 8:16 | |
in community and home. | 8:21 | |
When I was a boy, I used to love to come with my family, | 8:24 | |
as occasionally we did, across the sea, | 8:30 | |
to our home in South Carolina. | 8:35 | |
What a stately mansion it seemed to me | 8:38 | |
and my boyish way of looking at it, | 8:42 | |
sitting there, stalwarts and majestic among the trees, | 8:45 | |
some distance from the road, seemed to me the very epitome | 8:50 | |
of what life at its best should be. | 8:56 | |
Today, some 35, 40 years later, | 9:00 | |
I return to these scenes of my childhood, | 9:05 | |
and discover bitter disillusionment. | 9:09 | |
The shingles are curled with age | 9:13 | |
on the roof of the building. | 9:15 | |
The paint is faded from the sides. | 9:18 | |
There are ugly sockets where windows used to be, | 9:22 | |
and shutters hang loose upon their hinges. | 9:26 | |
A porch is half rotted away, | 9:29 | |
and a paling fence lies like a wounded dragon, | 9:33 | |
in the tall overgrown grass of the yard. | 9:37 | |
It is only a shadow of its former glory. | 9:42 | |
For time, you see, has taken its toll, | 9:46 | |
and the changes are everywhere in evidence. | 9:50 | |
In the midst of this world of change, | 9:55 | |
where in the twinkling of an eye so we are told, | 10:00 | |
life itself might be completely destroyed, | 10:04 | |
and perhaps vast portions of this earth | 10:09 | |
and universe as well, | 10:11 | |
as a result of the discoveries that have come to man alone, | 10:14 | |
powers which have wantonly let loose, | 10:18 | |
might bring to pass the greatest tragedy | 10:22 | |
that could possibly be known to mankind. | 10:26 | |
In the midst of such possibilities as this, | 10:30 | |
it is comforting to realize that there are some things | 10:33 | |
that refuse to change. | 10:38 | |
Some things that stand upon solid footing, | 10:40 | |
which have foundation that will not be removed. | 10:44 | |
People in a sense do not change, | 10:49 | |
or their outward appearances, I suppose, | 10:53 | |
but inwardly, we do not change. | 10:56 | |
It is for this reason that the eternal book, | 11:00 | |
out of who's pages a few moments ago, we read again, | 11:04 | |
still appeals to the hearts of mankind, | 11:09 | |
moves upon our minds, and directs our ways. | 11:13 | |
People do not change, essentially. | 11:19 | |
When my father went to Korea as a missionary, | 11:22 | |
good many years ago now, | 11:26 | |
he said that one day shortly after his arrival, | 11:30 | |
he went out into the great city of Saul. | 11:33 | |
Even in those days, a city of nearly a million people. | 11:37 | |
He found himself suddenly lost | 11:42 | |
in the midst of strange Oriental sounds and scenes, | 11:44 | |
in a little narrow alleyway filled with teaming people. | 11:49 | |
It was so narrow he could almost reach out | 11:56 | |
and touch the homes on either side, and the little shops. | 11:58 | |
And he said, as he found himself, walking along, | 12:04 | |
lost in this strange world, | 12:07 | |
suddenly his ears detected a familiar sound. | 12:10 | |
He went over to a nearby window on the street | 12:15 | |
and bent his ear against it. | 12:18 | |
And the sound came again. | 12:21 | |
It was the cry of a little baby. | 12:23 | |
He said he had warmed his heart to realize, | 12:27 | |
that 12,000 miles from home, | 12:31 | |
the little baby cried just like they do | 12:34 | |
anywhere else in the world. | 12:38 | |
And then further he walked along, | 12:41 | |
and another familiar sound, | 12:43 | |
pushed open a doorway that entered into a courtyard, | 12:46 | |
and there were children at play, | 12:51 | |
and they were laughing as they played. | 12:53 | |
Again, said he, his heart was warm, by a familiar sound, | 12:56 | |
familiar the world over. | 13:02 | |
There's a young missionary concerned | 13:04 | |
about what he might say to these people. | 13:07 | |
By way of ministering to their needs, | 13:11 | |
it came home to him that perhaps deep down on the inside, | 13:14 | |
there is no great difference after all, | 13:19 | |
though outwardly the differences may appear. | 13:23 | |
That the gospel of Jesus Christ, which meant so much to him, | 13:27 | |
might have the same telling effect and appeal | 13:32 | |
to the lives of those people over there, | 13:36 | |
whose emotions and responses to emotions | 13:40 | |
were no different from ours. | 13:44 | |
Jesus Christ, the same yesterday and today and forever, | 13:50 | |
says the writer of the book of Hebrews. | 13:55 | |
As long life shall last we cannot imagine these words | 13:59 | |
being expressed in any other way. | 14:03 | |
For somehow we feel that time will have no effect upon them. | 14:06 | |
That the changes that take place in the world | 14:13 | |
will have no meaning. | 14:17 | |
That Jesus Christ will still be the same. | 14:21 | |
The encouragement to the broken hearted. | 14:25 | |
The companion who walks with us every step of the way. | 14:29 | |
To says to us with just as much meaning today, | 14:34 | |
as to his disciples he spoke the words, | 14:37 | |
"Come unto me all the that labor and are heavy laden, | 14:41 | |
and I will give you rest." | 14:45 | |
The one who says, as we walk along this way of life, | 14:48 | |
I will never leave the, nor forsake the. | 14:53 | |
Good many years ago, so the story goes, | 14:59 | |
they told about the little French general, Napoleon, | 15:04 | |
who at the height of his military career, | 15:08 | |
called one day into his tent headquarters, | 15:10 | |
upon the field of battle, his general associates. | 15:13 | |
For a full half hour, so the story goes, | 15:19 | |
he exalted in the victories that had come to France. | 15:23 | |
To its armies. | 15:28 | |
But after a while, his voice became subdued, | 15:30 | |
a serious expression crept across his face. | 15:35 | |
He looked down upon the map of the world | 15:40 | |
that was spread out before him, | 15:42 | |
put his finger down with emphasis | 15:45 | |
upon the British aisles and declared, | 15:47 | |
"If it were not for this red spot, | 15:51 | |
I could conquer the world." | 15:54 | |
Someone using this as a springboard, | 15:57 | |
said that in imagination, | 16:02 | |
he was carried to the regions of darkness. | 16:03 | |
There said he, saw the devil and his cohorts | 16:08 | |
assembled together. | 16:12 | |
A map of the world spread out before them. | 16:14 | |
And this theme of the underworld, for a full half hour, | 16:18 | |
exalting in the victories that had come to him | 16:24 | |
and to his associates, as from one nation to another, | 16:28 | |
like a scourge they had gone, | 16:33 | |
and eaten into the hearts and minds of men, | 16:36 | |
and ruined their lives, from king to commoner alike. | 16:40 | |
But after a while, a serious expression | 16:47 | |
crept across his face, and his voice became subdued. | 16:51 | |
And he put his finger down with emphasis | 16:56 | |
upon a blood drenched spot, | 16:59 | |
just outside the city of Jerusalem, | 17:01 | |
where a Lord Christ had given his life and declared, | 17:04 | |
"If it were not for this red spot, | 17:08 | |
I could conquer the world." | 17:12 | |
As long as Christ is alive in our hearts, | 17:15 | |
and in our lives, in our world, | 17:18 | |
come what may, we have encouragement to believe | 17:22 | |
that there is hope for this world and its future. | 17:26 | |
Somehow apart from it, | 17:30 | |
we do not sense the hope | 17:33 | |
that could possibly be ours for needy hour. | 17:36 | |
Polycarp, the Christian of long ago, | 17:43 | |
near the close of a long and useful life, | 17:47 | |
devoted to his Christ, | 17:49 | |
was given the alternative by the authorities of Rome, | 17:52 | |
to recant his faith and spare his life. | 17:59 | |
He pondered the alternatives a brief moment, | 18:05 | |
and then he left behind some words | 18:11 | |
that have been written timelessly into Christian history, | 18:13 | |
when he said, "For 80 and six years, | 18:17 | |
I have served him, and he has done me no harm. | 18:21 | |
I will not now at last forsake him." | 18:26 | |
He went to his death, | 18:31 | |
and his associates put away his remains, | 18:34 | |
and left behind this tribute, | 18:38 | |
Statius Quadratus, being proconsul, | 18:41 | |
but Jesus Christ being King forever. | 18:45 | |
Statius Quadratus, whoever he might have been, | 18:50 | |
has long since faded from the pages of history, | 18:54 | |
but the living Christ whom we preach, | 18:59 | |
whom we declare, with whom we live and move | 19:02 | |
and have our being, lingers yet, | 19:06 | |
the changeless, solitary figure, | 19:10 | |
who is still the hope of our lives, | 19:14 | |
and the hope of our world. | 19:17 | |
In the year 1847, Henry F Lyte, | 19:20 | |
conducted his final communion service, in Brixham, England, | 19:25 | |
where the Mayflower was launched. | 19:30 | |
After having served for some 24 years, | 19:33 | |
as erector of this church, | 19:37 | |
as the evening shadows were gathering, | 19:41 | |
he walked out into the garden behind the church, | 19:44 | |
hard by the sea, | 19:47 | |
and he looked into the flaming sky | 19:49 | |
produced by a beautiful sunset, | 19:52 | |
those great red streamers sweeping across the heavens, | 19:56 | |
and reflecting their glory and the waters beneath, | 20:01 | |
somehow left an indelible impression upon his mind. | 20:05 | |
And he left the scene to sit down and write some lines, | 20:11 | |
that through these years have timelessly affected | 20:15 | |
the lives of people by way of encouragement and hope. | 20:20 | |
"Abide with me, fast falls the eventide. | 20:25 | |
The darkness deepens Lord, with me abide." | 20:30 | |
And the these words, | 20:35 | |
significant for my message this morning, | 20:36 | |
"Change and decay in all around I see. | 20:39 | |
Oh thou who changes not, abide with me." | 20:45 | |
So with encouragement and hope, | 20:54 | |
on this beautiful day, which in its manifestations, | 20:58 | |
reminds us of the presence of the eternal in our world. | 21:02 | |
We say one to another with encouragement, | 21:07 | |
Jesus Christ, the same yesterday and today and forever. | 21:11 | |
Let us pray. | 21:24 | |
Our mighty eternal God. | 21:34 | |
We thank The for this day. | 21:40 | |
For this privilege of sharing together, | 21:45 | |
in this beautiful place of worship. | 21:50 | |
And the uplifting experience of coming to see in all flesh, | 21:55 | |
our living Christ. | 22:02 | |
Through thou who God, speak his peace. | 22:06 | |
And his message of hope to our hearts. | 22:13 | |
In this changing world, | 22:19 | |
may we steadfastly cling to the unchanging Christ. | 22:23 | |
Through Jesus Christ, our Lord. | 22:32 | |
- | Amen. | 22:39 |
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