This Week's Light Service Sermon

Light Service Sermons for the Month
The Secret of Empowerment
God's Faithfulness
DATE: June 4, 2000
TEXT: Ephesians 17:6-19

I recently heard about an 87 year-old woman who really knows how to celebrate life. Her family was placing her in a nursing home so that she could receive the appropriate care, comfort, and attention she needed. She concurred with this. She thought this was a great idea so she could be with her peers. As they entered her new home she immediately spotted a quiet old gentleman who was sitting over in the corner. She shuffled over to this man, looked at him and said, "You remind me of my third husband." This took him back. He didn't know what to say to this aggressive woman. So finally he asked, "How many husbands have you had?" She promptly replied, "Two". (This woman knows how to celebrate life.)
What keeps you celebrating? What keeps you alive and well? I believe God has a word for us today. And this word is what ultimately keeps us alive and well. I want to talk straight with you because I want to share with you the most important truth you could ever hear. A truth not to just understand with your mind. But a truth that will pervade and guide your whole life--your attitudes, how you live, what you say, how you love. And this truth is also the most important truth you could ever share with anyone you love.
Before we talk about that life-changing truth, let's pray together..
Today Paul has some good news and some bad news. What do you want to hear first? We'll start with the bad news (otherwise I mess up my outline!).
Paul says in verse 1, chapter two of his letter to the Ephesian Lutheran Church, "You were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once lived, following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient". Paul didn't say, "You were sick." No, he said, "You were dead." He didn't say you were a bad person. He said, "You were dead, dead, dead." He didn't say as the New Age suggests, you haven't quite found that God within. Dead! Dead is dead! Every religion except Christianity assumes there is some way you or I by our own means, our power, can overcome this human condition we call sin--this human predicament that we see all around us. Every other religion suggests there is some way we by our own strength can overcome that. But here Christianity, based on the Bible, clearly takes another direction. Clearly, it says that we cannot by our own power, strength, will, or desire come to God. You and I without Christ are dead!
It reminds me of the story of the three men who died at the same time. They went to the pearly gates of heaven to meet St. Peter. St. Peter asked the first gentleman, "Why should I let you in?" The first man said, "I was a doctor and I helped heal a lot of people." "Okay," said St. Peter, "you can come in." He turned to the next man, "Why should I let you in?" "Well," he said, "I was a lawyer and I helped defend a lot of innocent people." "Okay, you can come in." Then St. Peter said to the last guy, "Why should I let you in?" The man answered, "I'm a managed health professional and I helped to keep health care costs down." St. Peter said, "Okay, you can come in, but only for three days!"
If St. Peter asks you, "Why should I let you in?" What would be your answer? Most people today would answer very similar to those three men--that somehow I earned it. Somehow I've done enough good things -- or not done enough bad things to earn God's favor -- to earn my way to God and to peace.
In Bill Gates' book, Business @ the Speed of Thought, he lays out eleven rules that students should learn in high school or college:
1) Life is not fair; get used to it.
2) The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself
3) You will not make $40,000 right out of high school.
4) If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.
5) Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping; they called it opportunity.
6) If you mess up, it's not your parent's fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.
7) Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you are.
8) Life has not done away with winners and losers.
9) Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you find yourself.
10) Television is not real life. In real life, people have to leave the coffee shop and go to work.
11) Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.
It is easy to see from this, the richest man in the world, that we live in a performance based world. It's no wonder we translate that into our relationship with God. But in the most important part of our life, in our relationships, performance just doesn't cut it.
Consider: What's a friendship based on performance? Not much of a friendship, is it? What's a marriage that's based on performance? Not a healthy marriage. And even more, a relationship with God based on performance leaves us short. And many, many people (even Christians) translate their performance mind-set into their faith relationship with God. But it always leaves us short. It always goes haywire. It may work for a while. You may work hard in your faith. You may try to do good things and please God and perform well as a Christian but eventually you get tired and burn out. Some of you here today know exactly what I'm talking about. You've been there!
Or, when things go bad in your life. If your relationship with God is based on performance you say things like, "Well, I must have done something wrong. God's out to get me. I must not be quite who I should be because God certainly wouldn't do this to me if I was doing the right thing." Performance. Or, if you do it well, and you're a good performer in your Christian faith, you might look at others around you and say, "Oh! They aren't performing well." And you become critical, judgmental and very hurtful. Performance-based Christianity always leads us to a dead end. That's the bad news. Now for the good news!
Lets look at verse 4: "But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ - by grace you have been saved."
How many of you saw the Robin William's movie "Awakenings?" For those of you who didn't, Robert DeNiro plays a person confined to a wheel chair, day in and day out. He is physically alive but existing in a living death. He has a condition that renders him almost inert. He can not communicate with the world outside of himself; he is confined to just sitting there in a trance.
One day a doctor portrayed by Robin Williams comes along with a treatment. Through his treatment, DeNiro is awakened! He's brought to life. Suddenly he can communicate. He can talk. He can listen. He can feel. He can cry. Most importantly, he can love and be loved.
Awakening. That's what God has done for you through Jesus Christ. You may be physically alive--socially alive--but through Jesus Christ he makes you spiritually alive. God takes the initiative and reconnects you with himself.
Secondly, verse 6 says that God raised us from death to life. God "raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus." That's an incredible image, sitting with God in heaven.
A number of years ago, Linda and I, Skip and Stacy, drove out to St. Louis to celebrate Thanksgiving with my brother and his family. On Friday night, he took us all to see Chip Davis and Mannheim Steamroller's Christmas program. He had the box seats owned by his company, A.G. Edwards at the St. Louis Basketball arena where to concert was to be held. We sat there watching the program from a great angle and saw it beautifully. (And the food wasn't bad either.) But more importantly, we enjoyed our friendship with the family.
Now I could not afford to buy one of these seats. Even if I had the money I could not have gotten myself into one of those seats that night. But he took us with him. We arrived with Steve. In the same manner, it is Jesus Christ who takes us with him into the heavenlies to be seated with Christ.
Seated in the heavenlies with Christ. In other words, we rest and enjoy the fact that we are his. Isn't that wonderful? We rest and enjoy the fact that no matter who we are, what we've done, we belong to Jesus. We belong totally to him. We are seated with him.
In verse 8 we see more. "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God." Not anything you've done on your own. It isn't something you've earned--just sit, rest! There's nothing you can brag about. Sit and rest. We call this God's grace.
God's grace is a gift, an undeserved gift. Bob Miller had a debilitating heart attack. It left him unable to work. He was depressed and became withdrawn. His family bought him a dog, a trained golden retriever, whose purpose it was to get Bob up and exercising, get him out of the house and walking. And it accomplished all that and more. When he walked his dog people would stop to pet him and talk to Bob as they did. Gradually, Bob's depression slowly faded away. But there is more to this story.
One night, his dog woke him up from a sound sleep. The dog came into his bedroom and became uncharacteristically aggressive, forcing Bob to get up. It was then that Bob, feeling symptoms of another heart attack, called 911 and made it to the hospital. A couple of months later, Bob was at a sports game with his dog. Once again the dog became more and more insistent that he leave the game. At the door to the stadium, once again Bob felt the symptoms of a heart attack, found a phone and called 911. Twice his dog saved his life.
Bob knows about grace. From death to life, that's grace. Bob did nothing to deserve it but he's certainly enjoying it. Grace is a shorthand word for God's incredible love story for you. God loved you so much that he emptied himself. He came to suffer--to die on a cross, so that he could take you to be his own.
What's the recipe for a healthy Christian life--for celebration? Someone said it like this: God takes a huge vat of his grace and puts us in there and lets us soak for a lifetime. That's what God wants to do for you.
What's that mean for us? What's our responsibility? Does that mean that if we're just sitting in the heavenlies with Jesus, it's all by grace that we can just do whatever we want. In verse 10, Paul says, "we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life." On the one hand, yes, absolutely, we just rest. But think of it this way, what if you had to do nothing, what would you do? What would you do if you knew that you are absolutely loved by God? The God of the universe personally loves you with passion. You are absolutely totally forgiven from everything you've done in the past. There's nothing so bad that God can't forgive you. You are called to be with Jesus forever. I don't know about you, but I couldn't sit still. I'm like Jimmy Stewart; I want to tell the whole world, "It's a wonderful life!" That's what God invites us to do.
God sent Jesus to make us who he dreamed for us to be. You are wired not to be self-centered, but to reach out with love and care for others. Deep down at the heart of it, that's what God made you to be. When all the layers get pulled away that's what comes through.
The story goes that a little boy was watching Michelangelo carefully sculpt the stone that would eventually become the famous statue of David. After, many, many hours the famous form of David began to appear. Finally, the little boy tugged on Michelangelo's cloak and asked, "Sir, how did you know he was in there?"
God knows what's deep inside. As he carves away the stone--the stone of sin that makes us be not what God dreamed for us to be--as he breaks that away, we become who God dreamed for us to be. You are God's workmanship. You are God's masterpiece. God is merciful. It's great news. God makes you alive. God lifts you up! God seats you with him in the heavenlies! God does all this by grace. And God makes you his masterpiece.
AMEN