"Salvation's Completeness"
Sermon Transcript for April 21, 2002
By Rev. Glen Beck, Minister of Pastoral Care
When our daughter was in college we went to visit her. And on Sunday we went to the church in that small town. And here a congregation of 500 had built a sanctuary that would seat 1500 so that they could minister to the academic community in that small town. And we went in the church and sat down in back. And your immediately attention is drawn to the stained glass window in the chancel area. There in that large window is a picture of Christ with His arms outstretched. But in the bottom of the picture in the stained glass window are these three words: Come, Tarry, Go. I’d like to just use these three words as a three-point sermon this morning in talking about salvation completeness. And will you pray for me. "Lord let the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts together be pleasing in Thy sight. We come to see Jesus and you said, "If you be lifted up He’d draw us all to Him." May His name be praised. Hide the preacher behind the cross so you can see Him. Amen."
"Come onto me all ye who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and you will find rest for your soul." This invitation is given in the 11th chapter of Matthew. And on this occasion the Bible says He went to teach and preach in their cities. And in verse 20 in that chapter it said He began to denounce their cities because they didn’t repent. And then He told them of the judgment, which was sure to come as a result of their sin and unbelief. But, He didn’t leave them there. Throughout the pages of holy record there’s written this call to come. God seems to see something even in the most rebellious, simple people worth saving. And it’s there from Genesis to Revelation we’re constantly being reminded of God’s concern for mankind. Not for what we are but what we may become through Him.
Today we’re being bombarded with all kinds of advertisements. I’d say most of them are good. Let me mention a few things. You know, you’ve got to have a good education. You need to establish a career. We need to practice the things that will lead to good health—a family, marriage, home, car, and career. All of these things are good, aren’t they? But good as all these things may be, they somehow fail to really appeal to the needs of our soul. God has called us to something better. We were created to serve Him. And until we serve Him we are only living a half-fulfilled life.
I like the story of the farmer who lived at the base of the mountain. Eagles nested in that mountain and one day he found this little eaglet that had fallen out of its nest. He took this little eaglet home and raised it with the chickens. And that was okay for a while but soon this eaglet outgrew the chickens. That eagle looked real strange in a chicken pen. And he said every once and awhile those eagles would fly over and they would hear the scream of those eagles as they flew over. And said the little eagle would look up and kind of look nervous for a few minutes. And then said the old farmer would come out and rattle his corn bucket and throw some corn in the dirt and he’d go back to eating with the chickens. It says he grew and those strong wings developed. One day that eagle flew over and something within his soul was restless. He jumped up on the fence post. Well, the farmer rattled his corn bucket again. And he said, "I wasn’t made to eat corn in the dirt with chickens." And he flew off to where he was supposed to be.
Dear friends, you are not made to eat in the dirt of the devil’s world. You are the child of a king! The king that says, "Come to me, all of ye, no matter what your past is. I have a place for you in the kingdom and I’ll give you rest." All of those other things—good though they may be—they promise much. But Jesus Christ, the Lord of the church, the One we try to represent, promises so much more. Satan would like to blind your eyes with good things for in search of these we may miss the best thing, and even eternal life. What’s your main goal in life? If it is not, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness", you’d better examine your priorities. I served with one who said one time, "What shall it profit the man though he gain the whole world and lose his soul?" Or what would you give in exchange for his soul?
I’m a child of the depression. As a little boy I had one pair of shoes. We wore it to school and we wore it to Sunday school. But when school was out in April we took those shoes off and all summer we went bare footed. Those feet could get hard enough you could just run right down the gravel road; you couldn’t even feel it. Some of you have been there. But some time during the summer, inevitably, you’d bang that big toe on a rock. And you’d knock the whole front of the toe off. You’d bleed; and it hurt so badly. Now I can remember back then running into the house and mother would say, "Sonny". And she’d put her arms around me and she’d squeeze me and I knew she loved me. She even helped put medicine on the toe and take all the hurt out of it.
The second thing he said--these are not options now--these are really commands. "Tarry until you be endowed with power from on high." These words were addressed to the disciples. The same ones who said "Don’t be so proud because the devil’s our subject to you. Rejoice that your name is written down in heaven." The occasion here for this was after the resurrection, the prayer in the garden had been prayed, Jesus Christ had died on that cross for your sins and mine. He had risen the third day to authenticate all that He stood for. And now, finally, after all of these years, the disciples were about to get it. And they felt like they could go out and whip a bat blind. Anxious to proclaim the message they’d seen and heard. But listen, Jesus said to them in Acts 1:4, "Tarry until you be endowed with power from on high." Paul said, "Put on the whole armor of God." Here’s a man that had the great religious experience on the Damascus road. He had this experience—apparently it wasn’t enough! God set him aside for a while before He sent him out to be the greatest of the apostles. There’s a lot more in the Christian life than simply coming.
We’re talking about the completeness of faith. I suppose there are some people when they come to a certain age, "I just as well get married and get it over with." Well, I’ve got news for you—you don’t just get married and get it over with. The question is, having moved up the road spiritually since you heard that invitation, because I tell you I want a salvation that will last when they turn out the lights at the Promise Keeper’s Convention, when the lay witness mission is over, when we go through the last chapter of the ALPHA study or the end of the Emmaus walk or wherever it is you get your spiritual high. I tell you it’s good to be in the house of the Lord among God’s people. But I want something that will work on Monday where I work, or in the classroom, or in the office and sometimes even in Administrative Board meetings. Do you know why we aren’t doing more for God than we are? Some have confessed Christ but all too few have heeded that second word, "Come unto me. Tarry. Tarry until you become endowed. Christian life is no cream puff thing. It takes a person like Stephen’s call to the Holy Ghost and power. We come to Christ, we receive that gift of eternal life, "old things are past away and all things are become new", II Corinthians 5:17 says. And then we go out from there and we say, "I’m going to win this battle of sin and evil in my life if it kills me." And it will.
There’s a word in Jeremiah, it’s again in Hebrews, "Behold the day is coming," Jeremiah said, "and I’ll make a new covenant with you. I will put my law within them and write it on their hearts." God can do something for us that we want to be His people. It’s not some kind of duty we’re doing. Kenneth Kinghorn wrote a little book called Dynamic Discipleship. It’s been a great blessing and help to me in understanding the spiritual life. I heartily recommend it to you. But in this, I was looking through it again this week in preparation for this sermon; he has a formula there. And I’ve asked Dan to project it on the screen. The false formula goes like this: Christian conversion plus our own ability equals effective discipleship. Huh-uh. The correct formula: Christian conversion plus Christ’s power and the Holy Spirit equals effective discipleship. It’s Christ in you, the hope of glory. Jesus said this is the work of God that you believe in Him only as sin. There’s an old hymn chorus that says, "Only believe, only believe all things are possible only believe." I wish I had more time to develop this.
You prayed this morning what we call the Lord’s Prayer. That’s not the Lord’s Prayer, that’s the disciples’ prayer! I urge you to go home this morning and read the Lord’s Prayer in John 17. There He prays for those disciples and you’re in that prayer too. And then go over to Romans 7 and 8. Watch Paul as he struggles with you, "Oh wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from this body of death." Then he talks all about it. I’m persuaded that nothing shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord. I’m not hung up on one word of grace or two words of grace or twenty-two words of grace, but I am convinced that God always has something more for us.
That brings us—we come, we tarry; now we’re ready to go. "Go and make disciples of all nations" is not an option as Mike said a while ago. This is a mandate. I go in to a lot of churches and they say, "We’re not very mission minded around here." And I don’t say it but I think it, "If you’re not mission minded, you’re not a church at all." We talked about coming to Christ, being filled with the spirit, but there’s a world to win. And the message, which would win it, was left with that little band of disciples. And those who would believe through them and that include us today. How many people did you bring to Christ last year? Please don’t say, "That’s what we pay Mike and Dan for." The Bible says you pay them to teach you how to do it. That’s what the Bible says. The second question, "How many people did you talk to about the Lord Jesus Christ that means so much to you?" If indeed Jesus is all the world to me, my life, my all, I suggest that you can’t keep still about it. You’ve got to talk about it.
The church is a filling station. You don’t come in to a filling station and fill up your car to rev your motor in the filling station. You come in to a filling station to fill up with gas so you can go! The real service begins when you leave the church this morning. Here we’ve touched a vision hopefully. I went and had lunch with Bishop Ntambo yesterday. He said, "Glen I want you to see some video I made." You wouldn’t believe the things he’s doing there in the Congo. The United Methodist church has not done so well in this country, but over there in spite of all the wars and everything else, it’s growing faster than any place in the world unless maybe it’s Korea. He showed me pictures of churches and classrooms. And then he showed me a picture of this orphanage. These children, maybe from three up to eight or ten years old, and they were in one of the pictures they were eating lunch. And these kids are orphans; they’ve been products of the war and picked up off the streets, abandoned by their parents. Whatever, the church is trying to do something about it. After we came to it I said, "Stop that, I want to ask you a few questions. How many times a day do you feed these children?" This is all they are going to get to eat now. He said, "Glenn, we feed them three times a week."
Dear friends, we need to get our heart broken to the things that break the heart of God. As Bob Paris who founded World Vision once said, "It happened to me out on the back road of Haiti. I saw what our missionaries were doing with limited resources, the crying need of those people. There openness to the gospel. The only hope of Haiti or the US or any place else is the story of Jesus Christ. And I came back to my church saying, "We may not be able to do much but we can do more than we’ve done."
Let me close with this story. It’s Tony Compella’s story in his Easter sermon, "It’s Friday but Sunday’s Coming". About every preacher I know has borrowed from it some place along the way. He tells about being down on the Haiti border awaiting a little mission plane that will take him back to the capitol. He said, "I stood there with my luggage in my hand; I was ready to go. And a lady came up to him with a little baby with the orange hair and the bloated belly, the obvious signs of starvation. And said his little arms and legs were like sticks. And this lady knew enough English she said, "Take my baby mister. Please take my baby. Don’t let my baby starve. Don’t let my baby die." I’ve been to Haiti eight times and I think, "What do you do in a country like Haiti? There’s thousands of starving babies there." He said that little mission plane touches down on that grass runway carved out of the barren country side. I ran to catch the plane as it taxied out with the mother running behind with that pitiable cry, "Take my baby mister. Please take my baby. Don’t let my baby starve. Don’t let my baby die." He said I got aboard the plane, the plane revs up; the motor drowns out the scratching on the window. I can’t hear, but I know what she’s saying, "Take my baby mister. Please take my baby. Don’t let my baby starve. Don’t let my baby die." No matter how often you see that scene you can’t shake it from your mind and he said half way back to the Capital he could still see the pain in that mother’s eye and hear her cry "Take my baby mister. Please take my baby. Don’t let my baby starve. Don’t let my baby die." He said it comes to him who that baby is…it’s Jesus who said as you’ve done it to the least of these, my brethren, you’ve done it unto me and as you’ve done it not unto the least of these… Do you want to be shocked right out of your shoes. If every member in the South Indiana Conference would sacrifice one coke or one cup of coffee a week we would double, double what we are doing now for Second Mile Mission Support. We spend 8 times as much on ourselves as we do in fulfilling the Great Commission all while mother’s cry, "Please don’t let my baby die".
Today we begin a week of mission emphasis. Wednesday evening Natambo will tell you he’s a product of mission. I’ve heard him give his testimony. I said Natambo I want you to share that story with our people here. Don’t miss it. Don’t miss it. Dick McClain from the Mission’s Society will be the speaker next Sunday. Then Mike’s going to come here and challenge you to make what we call a Faith Promise. If you are already one of the 150-200 people already doing that, I congratulate you. You’ve done so much more than most churches in the Conference. But if there are 350 giving units in this congregation and 175 are already involved in Faith Promise, would it be alright in your prayers this week if you pray for half of those who never got around to taking this step of Faith, that they would do it in this weekend. Jesus said "Come unto me, Tarry until you be endowed with power, Go into all the world and preach the gospel. May God Bless you as you endeavor to fulfill the Great Commission in your place and in your way.
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