"Which Way to Happiness?"
Sermon Transcript for February 8, 2004
Scripture Reading: Matthew 6:24-34; John 10:10
By Rev. Glen Beck
It was early morning on Wall Street in New York City. The early morning sun had begun to find its way in the canyons of lower Manhattan. Crowds were going to work; the street was filled with a hurrying crowd. Suddenly someone yelled, “Look up there!” The night before, two Frenchmen had secreted themselves into these high skyscrapers. They shot a line across Wall Street, and then they pulled a cable across and securely anchored it at both ends. And then early, as the sun came up, he stepped out on the high wire a quarter of a mile above the street far below. As he began making his way across with only the balancing pole to steady, the swirling winds at the dangerous crossing were even more treacherous. And suddenly, sheer terror gripped him. He’d gone too far to back up. He had to keep moving. Now all eyes below were on him. Police rushed to the top for some kind of rescue attempt. Far below you could hear the crowd encouraging him on. And then his terror turned to ecstasy. His confidence returned; and he began dancing on that cable and walked across the street two or three times on that high-rise cable 1500 feet above the street far below. In his ecstasy, as he danced back and forth, finally stepping off into the waiting arms of police who arrested him. But before they took him away, he was asked the question by a reporter that was on the lips of everybody that watched the scene,
“Why, oh why, did you ever do anything as foolish and dangerous as that?” And he hesitated for a moment knowing that his words would be quoted time and time again. And he said, “When I see three oranges, I have to juggle. And when I see two towers, I have to walk.” There was a reporter from the Star some time ago writing a religious article and he concluded this with a question, “Isn’t there a level of the Christian lifestyle that makes you call out and say, ‘I want that above all else?’”
Please stand for the reading of the Word. Everybody ought to read the Sermon on the Mount at least once a week. If you begin to feel pretty good about your relationship with God, just read this. It will put you on your knees. We are talking this morning about “Which Way to Happiness?” I’m reading the Scripture from the American Standard Version. Hear these words from the Sermon on the Mount:
“No one can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one and love the other; or else he will hold to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and mammon. For this reason I say to you, do not be anxious for your life as to what you shall eat or what you shall drink. Nor for your bodies as to what you should put on. For is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air. They do not sow; neither do they reap nor gather in the barns. And yet your Heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they? Which of you by being anxious can add a single cubit to your life span? And why are you anxious about clothing? Observe how the lilies in the field grow. They don’t toil or spin. Yet I say to you Solomon in all of his glory was not clothed like one of them. But if God so clothed the grass in the field which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown in the furnace, will he not much more do for you, oh you of little faith? Don’t be anxious then saying, ‘What shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or what shall we clothe ourselves?’ or all these things you Gentiles seek after. But your Heavenly Father knows that you have need of all these things” Get this verse, “Seek you first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you.” Then Jesus said, over in John 10, “I have come that you might have life and have it more abundantly.” This is the Word of God this morning for the people of God. Thanks be to God. (You may be seated.)
As you consider these words from Jesus in what we call the “Sermon on the Mount”, we say, “I believe those things.” but all too often we listen and respond to the world’s message, don’t we? The world promises so much, but in the end gives so little of it. Something tells us in this crazy world in which we live there must be something better than all of those things. Did it ever seem to you like you’re walking a tight wire and the longer you keep going you wonder, “How long before I fall off?”
There’s enough boy in me that if I could, I’d probably attend every circus that came to town. One of my favorite acts is the one in which those daring performers up in the top of the big top, doing their spectacular stunts on that tight wire, walking across without security nets sometimes. The inevitable bicycle act, balancing chairs…there are many variations of this part of the show. But in that tight wire act they all have one thing in common. Do you know what it is? —that balancing pole. They can’t hold steady without it! It’s something to hold to, something to steady, and something to balance.
And in a sense, we too walk that tight wire from the platform of birth to the platform of death. But God has given us in Jesus Christ a faith to hold to—balancing poles if you please—some Christian certainties that will hold us and steady us and will make for the net that secret of happiness in life. These certainties can give our life joy, peace, and satisfaction. They create assurance every single day we live. I’d like to mention three of these. There’s a lot more, but in this simple sermon, the purpose is to steady believers, to challenge those who don’t know what it means to have this abundant life that Christ offers. So you pray for me now as we come to this part, “Lord, may the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts together be pleasing to you and bring glory to your name. Amen.”
The first one has to do with a personal experience with Jesus Christ. Over in John 9 there is a story of a man who was born blind. He felt the touch of the Lord Jesus Christ and he could see again. The Pharisees wanted to discount his experience and they said, “This miracle is scientifically and theologically impossible.” And they demanded that this poor fellow give some good, sound, reasonable explanation for this so-called miracle. Now he wasn’t any theologian, wasn’t probably too religious. But these eternal words came from his lips. Something like this, “I don’t know if I can explain this to your satisfaction. But this one thing I know, once I was blind and now I can see.” He’d been transformed, you see, by the touch of the living Savior. And he was holding on to the greatest of our religious certainties—his was a personal experience with the Lord Jesus Christ!
Now some say if you can’t explain your faith, it’s not real. But there are a lot of things out there in life that I can’t explain. I don’t know a thing about radios but I can turn that little button and get music. I don’t know a thing about fixing TV’s, but I know where the on and off switch is. I don’t know anything about electricity, but there is a switch back there that brings on light. In the Christian experience, that doesn’t mean that experience is unexplainable. It’s proven in a higher court than reason. There’s three ways to come to knowledge and truth. Some one called them the three “R’s”—there’s research. We know science alone is inadequate. You can’t in science, put in a test tube love, and beauty, and character and purpose. The second one is reason—that’s philosophy. We have all studied some of that. Why am I here? Where did it come from? Where was it born? But the final “R” is that of revelation. The Bible is an account of God’s progressive revelation from Genesis on through Revelation. A time and a place, finally, we’ve just celebrated in the incarnation A time when the Word became flesh and dwelled among us. God put on the flesh of you and I and came in full revelation. Taught as never man taught. Healed in miracles, as never man did. Finally He said, “For this purpose was I born”. He went to the cross to take your sins and mine. That proved He was who He said He was. He came forth that third day. He continues this revelation on a personal basis. And like the blind man of old, we can say with certainty, “This one thing I know, I was blind, but now I see.”
Being a preacher you can only give your testimony once, then you’ve got to find something else to say. So I just get to preach once. May I share a little bit of my faith journey with you? I long ago gave up trying to put God in some kind of box. That you have to do it just like I did or someone else did. Just about the time you put God in a box, he’ll jump out and do His thing another way. But our faith journey can be just as different as our personalities. But whatever road that journey takes, it finally has to lead to that old rugged cross! The old hymn says, “I must needs go home by the way of the cross, there’s no other way but this. I shall never get sight of the Gates of Light, if the way of the cross I miss.”
I was brought up by Christian parents who took their faith seriously. I was raised around the family alter where my brother and I were taught the holy habits. We were always in church. It was probably the first place I ever went—the church. We went Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night prayer meeting, every night of the revival. I joined the Methodist Church as a teenager. Not much happened there. It wasn’t the preacher’s fault. Then Myrna came along in my life and we joined the Methodist Church there south of Connersville on Road 1, a small Methodist church. If you are in a little church like that, I went through all the “Chairs” in the church. But I always knew there was something more. There was something more in life than what I had found.
At that point, my faith life was more duty than joy. If you’re a good person you ought to go to church, right? So we went to church faithfully and we paid our dollar a week or whatever. But God in his prevenient grace about that time had been doing some things in our life that made us realize there was more to it than what we were getting. That Sunday morning Myrna and I sat there in the third pew from the front with four little kids we were trying to keep quiet in the pew including your pastor. That preacher that Sunday morning talked a lot about Jesus. I tell you, he lifted and he made Him so real. Later on I learned that Scripture, “In Christ be lifted up. He’ll draw us all into Him.” And he was drawing me that morning in an unusual way. He finally said you had to be born again, and I knew I hadn’t been. That day the Holy Spirit seemed to say, “Glen Beck, how long are you going to go on playing church? When are you going to get serious about this business that I’ve called you to” Thank God, that was the day that old things passed away! “There is a way that seems right unto a man,” the Bible says, “but the end thereof are the ways of death.” (Proverbs 14:12) And then there’s a cross in the way. Don’t forget why, in the very center is this cross in every Christian church, there’s a cross to remind us of the way to glory. This can be out of Christian certainty without which we can go on to those other parts.
Secondly, using that same strong verb “I know”. In Romans 8, we know these Scriptures, and I know that in all things, God somehow works together for good to those who love him and who are called according to his purpose. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if right now, in 2004, whatever happens this year that it is in God’s name, whether good or bad, and everything is somehow going to work together for good. God is still on the throne in spite of this world and psychopaths, but he’s still in charge, George, right? Amen. I like the parable of the boy and his grandfather who lived on a small ranch in the West. One day the boy’s horse ran away and a neighbor said, “Sorry about your bad luck old man.” And he said, “The bad luck is not over yet.” Days later the horse came back. He brought a small herd of wild horses with him. And he says, “Congratulations old man at your good luck.” And the old man said, “It’s not over yet.” One day while breaking these wild horses, the boy broke his leg and left him crippled. The neighbor said, “Heard about your bad luck, old man.” He said, “It’s not over yet.” The parable ends, it says that all the boys in the valley went away to war and all of them were killed on a foreign battle field. All except that crippled boy that stayed to care for his aging grandfather the rest of his days.
The simple truth of this parable is when sorrow and tragedy strike and all the walls of life come tumbling down, the night is darkest—you can’t even see the stars, just remember “It’s not over yet.” That life of ours is like a beautiful tapestry. It doesn’t look like much on the underside; on the other side it’s a thing of beauty. Today we just see the lower side, don’t we? We cry out, “I can’t see why this can happen to me. Life just isn’t fair!” God says, “Wait and you’ll see. You’ll look back on it all and you’ll say, ‘God was there for us.’”
I think Mike told this story some time ago but it is worth telling again about the old missionary coming home from a lifetime of service on the foreign mission field. He was on the same ship with President Teddy Roosevelt who was coming back from a hunting trip. The ship docked at a pier in New York. Bands were playing and crowds were shouting. The square was full of people to welcome home the President. The young missionary stood on the rail of the ship observing all of it along with his friend. Finally the celebration was over; the crowd was gone and the two of them started down the gangway of the ship. His friend said to the old missionary, he said, “This doesn’t seem right somehow. You’ve given your whole life to God unselfishly on a foreign field. Here you are coming home and not a soul to greet you. The President shooting lions or something and the whole crowd… This isn’t fair.” But the old missionary said, “I’m not home yet.”
That second balancing pole is the confidence we have knowing the best we know how we are walking in the light that God gives us. And the peace, which comes in knowing and be able to say, “I know Christ as my Savior”, living our lives the best we know how in the center of His will. Feeling as Paul said there is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. Whatever happens today or in all of our tomorrows, it is in His hands. God cares for and keeps watch over His own. What a balancing pole He is!
Five minutes, George, do you think you’ll make it? Trouble with old preachers, they’ve got too many stories. That third balancing pole…this is it. That Christian certainty where we know, for instance, that if our earthly dwelling were taken down like a tent, we have a permanent house in heaven not made with hands but by God. John Quincy Adams was a great statesman, a great Christian. Then he got older. In the spring he was slowly making his way down the street on his canes. He met his friend. He said, “Good morning, how’s John Quincy Adams today?” And the grand old Christian gentleman said, “If you’re asking about the house that Adams lives in, not much good. The windows are broken out and the roof is tumbling in, the foundation is crumbling. The house shakes with every wind and I expect the tenant will be moving out of the old house pretty soon.” But straightening himself on his cane, he threw back his head and said; “Now if you’re asking about John Quincy Adams himself, he’s all right now and he will be a thousand years from now.” This is our Christian certainty. It may be hard for our youth to feel, but you don’t have to be on social security to…. (Lost some of transcript due to changing tape to other side)
The high and low society, rich and the poor, the old and the young, death is a great leveler. But shall we grow by having a fear of death? It’s natural for us to fear to step out alone. I’m old enough for that promotion, but I’m not going to be in any hurry. Are you George? But we have a Christian certainty, which we deal with today, something greater than simply an escape from fear of death. Many times you’ve heard it said, “We’re not ready to live until we’re ready to die.” But this is our hope, steadfast and sure. We know that if our earthly house were dissolved, we’d have the building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. Yet not what it seems to be. I visited Rosie Taube the other day. If you know Rosie, she’s had a tough life. But that lady knows the Lord. She’s on her deathbed. She knows she won’t be here but a little while. And I’ve noticed in being there with people with that time, they see things that we don’t see. And she said, “I see the angels of God around my death bed. Now I know it won’t be long and they are going to take me away.” Now I don’t know what you think of that, but I know what the Bible says, “Angels of God camp around about those that love Him.” When we say “goodbye” here, it is not a farewell but a promise through Christ who rose from the grave and said we should meet again. The One who said, “I go to prepare a place for you. I’ll come again and receive you into myself.” Either that man’s the biggest liar that ever lived or the greatest truth teller that ever lived! I choose to believe Him, don’t you? If we are to find the road that leads to happiness, we need to have this balancing pole in place.
Spurgeon was a Billy Graham of a prior generation known as one of the greatest preachers of all time. He made plans in his closing days for his own memorial service. On that day the London papers said, “The gifted tongue of Spurgeon is silent, to be heard no more.” But that’s not what Spurgeon believed. He planned for his friends to sing for him as his casket was lowered in the grave. He said, sing from Cowper’s hymn, “There is a Fountain Filled with Blood”. He said, “Sing that third stanza. It goes like this: “Then in a nobler, sweeter song, I’ll sing thy power to save, when this poor lisping, stammering tongue lies silent in the grave.”
Those three certainties: know salvation, nothing touches but that has to go through me, and finally, the hope of eternal life. I have a couple of scriptures I want to leave with you. We have to seek first the kingdom of God, His righteousness, and then all of these other things will take care of themselves. Jesus said, “I come to give you life and to give it to you more abundantly”
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