William C. Turner, Jr. - The Ordeal of Salvation (March 12, 2000)
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
- | The first chapter. | 0:03 |
In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was | 0:07 | |
baptized by John in the Jordan. | 0:13 | |
And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the | 0:16 | |
heavens torn apart and the spirit descending like a | 0:20 | |
dove on him and a voice came from heaven, you are my son, | 0:25 | |
the beloved, with you I am well pleased. | 0:31 | |
And the spirit immediately drove him out | 0:37 | |
in to the wilderness. | 0:40 | |
He was in the wilderness 40 days, tempted by Satan. | 0:42 | |
And he was with the wild beasts | 0:47 | |
and the angels waited on him. | 0:50 | |
Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee | 0:54 | |
proclaiming the good news of God and saying, | 0:59 | |
"the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God | 1:02 | |
has come near, repent and believe in the good news." | 1:06 | |
This is the word of the Lord. | 1:13 | |
- | Good morning. | 1:35 |
I greet you in the name of Lord Jesus who is | 1:38 | |
good all the time, and especially today. | 1:40 | |
Let me read verse 21 from First Peter, Chapter three. | 1:48 | |
I reread it from the authorized version. | 1:55 | |
The light figure wherein to even baptism doth also | 2:01 | |
now save us. | 2:04 | |
Not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, | 2:06 | |
but the answer of a good conscious toward God | 2:09 | |
by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. | 2:13 | |
Consider with me this morning, the ordeal | 2:18 | |
of salvation, the ordeal of salvation. | 2:23 | |
Let us pray. | 2:29 | |
God be merciful on to us and bless us. | 2:31 | |
Cause your face to shine upon us that your | 2:34 | |
way may be known upon the Earth. | 2:36 | |
Your saving health to all generations. | 2:38 | |
Send the power of the holy ghost upon your servant | 2:42 | |
and your people, that your word may be truly declared | 2:45 | |
and heard for Christ sake. | 2:49 | |
Amen. | 2:53 | |
The ordeal of salvation. | 2:55 | |
This is one of the very familiar passages in | 3:00 | |
the New Testament, to one who spends significant time | 3:03 | |
instructing candidates for baptism. | 3:08 | |
Because baptism is a mystery and its meaning is | 3:14 | |
given in figures, this passage necessarily comes | 3:18 | |
to the fore. | 3:24 | |
What its poignant image concerning the meaning of | 3:26 | |
this gift of baptism compels us to visit it | 3:29 | |
again and again. | 3:35 | |
This passage states forthrightly that | 3:38 | |
baptism saves us. | 3:42 | |
It then moves immediately to a qualifying statement, | 3:46 | |
but does not remove the direct claim | 3:53 | |
that baptism saves us. | 3:57 | |
Rather it opens space | 4:01 | |
that enables us to say more fully what is given in baptism | 4:05 | |
and what is given in salvation. | 4:10 | |
There's a real sense in which what is given in salvation | 4:16 | |
is precisely an ordeal. | 4:19 | |
An ordeal. | 4:23 | |
Salvation highlights the problem | 4:25 | |
of the venture on Earth, | 4:28 | |
in a land that is soiled by sin, tainted by greed. | 4:32 | |
Bent on ordering itself in a manner that is contrary | 4:37 | |
to the will of God. | 4:43 | |
Tension is forced | 4:46 | |
between those whom God is saving | 4:48 | |
and a world that is lost. | 4:52 | |
See the image if you will, | 4:56 | |
those who are being saved, like the family of Noah, | 4:59 | |
are taken in to the Ark of safety, while the flood | 5:03 | |
runs its course and does its work of judgment. | 5:08 | |
The ordeal of salvation, the ordeal of salvation. | 5:14 | |
Aren't we informed that salvation is a gift by grace, | 5:18 | |
we are saved through faith. | 5:22 | |
That not of ourselves, it is a gift from God. | 5:25 | |
Not of words, lest anyone should boast, | 5:28 | |
we are familiar with those words. | 5:33 | |
So how can we say then that | 5:35 | |
salvation is an ordeal? | 5:38 | |
Is this heresy? | 5:42 | |
Have we misspoken in the matter? | 5:44 | |
Have we stated something other than the truth? | 5:47 | |
I think not, I think not. | 5:52 | |
Salvation does not unfold, and progress | 5:55 | |
to its completion without an ordeal. | 5:59 | |
An ordeal if you will that may be compared to the flood. | 6:04 | |
Salvation must be worked out with fear | 6:09 | |
and with trembling. | 6:13 | |
With fear and trembling on the ark, in the wilderness | 6:15 | |
where we have no assurance concerning the outcome. | 6:21 | |
The only promise is that God is with us, | 6:25 | |
that we are in God's hands, that our lives | 6:31 | |
belong to our God. | 6:35 | |
After being given the figure in this text, | 6:39 | |
we are informed that what is at stake is not the | 6:43 | |
washing of the filth from the flesh. | 6:48 | |
What is at stake says the text is a clear | 6:52 | |
conscience toward God. | 6:55 | |
When I see this image here of a clear conscience toward God, | 6:58 | |
what comes back to my mind is the way we used to have | 7:02 | |
light, light and days gone by. | 7:06 | |
Light was a dirty business. | 7:09 | |
Light in a kerosene lamp, or through a kerosene lamp | 7:11 | |
had a globe over the light and the soot from the light | 7:15 | |
would make the globe nasty and in order to see the | 7:19 | |
light coming through the globe one had to constantly | 7:22 | |
cleanse that globe, it got mighty dirty. | 7:26 | |
There may be someone in here who remembers those days. | 7:31 | |
There was plenty of light but the globe had to | 7:35 | |
be kept clear, the clear conscience, the image that gives | 7:38 | |
me insight is that of a clear globe. | 7:42 | |
So that the light can come forth and so that one | 7:48 | |
can peer through, so that God can get in touch | 7:52 | |
with us and we can get in touch | 7:55 | |
with God. | 7:59 | |
To talk about salvation as ordeal, | 8:01 | |
is not to diminish salvation, | 8:05 | |
rather it is to intensify it, to bring forth the grace | 8:09 | |
more gloriously. | 8:14 | |
Make no mistake in the matter, make no mistake in the matter | 8:16 | |
there is grace from God, there is grace from God. | 8:19 | |
That one does not yay, can not know. | 8:24 | |
Til walking in close places. | 8:30 | |
There is grace I declare. | 8:35 | |
There is grace in being jammed by God. | 8:37 | |
Backed in to a corner, | 8:42 | |
crammed in the ark. | 8:46 | |
Where one can do nothing different from what God | 8:49 | |
has instructed. | 8:55 | |
There's great grace in being crammed in a corner | 8:57 | |
and jammed in the ark. | 9:01 | |
It's a humbling experience, it's an humbling experience | 9:05 | |
to be confronted face to face | 9:09 | |
with the potential for failing God. | 9:12 | |
For drawing back when we should go forward. | 9:17 | |
For searching for the way out when God has given | 9:22 | |
us the way through. | 9:26 | |
Many of the ordeals of ancient Israel | 9:29 | |
for following this pattern, | 9:34 | |
many of the ordeals of this sinful world, | 9:36 | |
this hard-headed church, for looking for the way out | 9:40 | |
when God has given the way through. | 9:45 | |
We have a tendency to think of baptism as something | 9:50 | |
that is quite tame, as an activity that is quite tame. | 9:53 | |
Indeed there is often a tendency even to think of | 9:58 | |
salvation in this way, | 10:01 | |
salvation as overly tame. | 10:03 | |
But there is a perishing world | 10:08 | |
all around us. | 10:12 | |
There is a world that is waiting to gobble us, | 10:15 | |
waiting to devour us. | 10:18 | |
Salvation in the figure of this text is not tame, | 10:20 | |
it is not static, rather it is vital it is vibrant. | 10:24 | |
Predicated on remaining in the ark above the waves | 10:29 | |
atop the fray, protected from the dangers of life. | 10:34 | |
See if you will the contiguity here between safety | 10:40 | |
and danger, it's only a matter of inches | 10:45 | |
between safety and danger, but in those few inches | 10:50 | |
there is a world of difference. | 10:56 | |
A point is reached whether one is either in the ark | 10:59 | |
or outside the ark. | 11:05 | |
What a word with which to begin Lent this year. | 11:09 | |
What a time in our larger life. | 11:15 | |
I thought about it this week. | 11:18 | |
Lent begins following Super Tuesday, | 11:20 | |
right in the middle of the ACC tournament. | 11:25 | |
As I pondered these two events it occurred to me | 11:30 | |
that here we have two great symbols | 11:36 | |
that can easily distract us in our devotion to God. | 11:40 | |
Power and allurement on the one hand, | 11:47 | |
indulgence in the sort | 11:52 | |
of pleasure to which only a precious few are privy. | 11:55 | |
But whether it's the campaign or the tournament, | 12:01 | |
or any other distraction that may invade our life, | 12:06 | |
Lent is like a plumb line, | 12:10 | |
a measuring rod being dropped | 12:15 | |
down in to the middle of our affairs. | 12:17 | |
Telling us, square up, measure yourself. | 12:22 | |
Examine the angle of your stance, look once again | 12:27 | |
at your rectitude, come full face with your god | 12:31 | |
and come clean concerning your devotion. | 12:36 | |
Lent drops right down in to our mitch, | 12:42 | |
in to the thickness of our lives. | 12:47 | |
Forcing us to answer the question what is of | 12:50 | |
ultimate concern for you? | 12:54 | |
Forcing us to recognize what it means | 12:57 | |
to live in Christ | 13:00 | |
and to make a sincere offering of ourselves. | 13:03 | |
I declare, it's about living | 13:07 | |
in the ark. | 13:11 | |
Lent is a time to repent, to turn around, | 13:14 | |
to go in the other direction. | 13:17 | |
To break the fascination with what prevents us | 13:19 | |
from being fully yielding in to the hand | 13:23 | |
and to the wheel of god. | 13:27 | |
It is an occasion to pause, to slow down from the pace | 13:30 | |
of this fast world that is no friend to grace. | 13:36 | |
Paraphrase a popular song from a few days gone by, | 13:41 | |
it's an opportunity to get away from the bustling | 13:46 | |
crowd and all that rat race noise | 13:49 | |
down in the street. | 13:54 | |
And somebody knows that song | 13:57 | |
was sung by the Drifters. | 14:00 | |
How easily we pass over the messages of warning | 14:03 | |
and signs so crucial to our knowledge, | 14:09 | |
if we are not slowed down | 14:13 | |
from time to time. | 14:16 | |
In our mad world. | 14:19 | |
Your deal of salvation can be summarized | 14:23 | |
in three moments. | 14:26 | |
Separation form the world | 14:30 | |
that is under judgment. | 14:32 | |
Living and being sustained in the ark. | 14:35 | |
And going from the ark | 14:40 | |
with the promise of God as guarantee. | 14:43 | |
One of the hardest moves for Christians | 14:49 | |
is to acknowledge the judgment under which | 14:52 | |
the world lives. | 14:57 | |
We are part of our world, for we are given our life | 15:00 | |
in communities of nurture. | 15:04 | |
And we can scarcely remove ourselves from the economies | 15:07 | |
that govern our common life. | 15:13 | |
From the time we rise from the bed til we return | 15:17 | |
to that bed, we move from one scene to another. | 15:22 | |
In which we are mediated to our world | 15:27 | |
in primary ways, in ways that tether and tie us, | 15:31 | |
and hold us to it. | 15:35 | |
Surely we are no different from people in the time | 15:39 | |
of Noah, to use the language of the Lord, they ate, | 15:42 | |
they drank, the married, they gave in marriage. | 15:46 | |
The Genesis account tells us that for 40 years | 15:51 | |
Noah preached, and apparently there were no converts | 15:55 | |
with the exception of his family. | 16:00 | |
And the animals who didn't seem to have much choice | 16:04 | |
in the matter. | 16:09 | |
One might imagine that even among his family there | 16:11 | |
were some protests, I can imagine | 16:15 | |
that somebody in the family had business, | 16:19 | |
someone in the family had ties to the rest of the community. | 16:23 | |
Separating to go in to the ark was an ordeal, | 16:28 | |
not just a matter of course. | 16:32 | |
There can be no doubt concerning the ordeal that | 16:37 | |
was present in the separation. | 16:41 | |
The force on Lent, like the ark | 16:44 | |
is to cause us to admit the judgment | 16:49 | |
that is upon our world. | 16:53 | |
The flaw that is present within it. | 16:56 | |
The fallenness of our common condition. | 17:00 | |
That's not always easy to do. | 17:04 | |
As a matter of fact more often than not | 17:06 | |
it is painful to admit | 17:08 | |
the real flaw that is in our lives | 17:12 | |
and in our world. | 17:17 | |
This is the brink that forces us to acknowledge | 17:20 | |
how we are at the very root | 17:25 | |
of our existence. | 17:30 | |
The base line, the bottom line is that we are fallen | 17:32 | |
and even if we don't like that word, | 17:39 | |
the description of the condition | 17:42 | |
amounts to the same thing. | 17:45 | |
You ever watch the news and see the first few snippets | 17:49 | |
and get depressed. | 17:53 | |
A killing here, a strangulation there, a robbery here. | 17:56 | |
A dirty deed here, does it ever occur to us | 17:59 | |
that this is really the way we are? | 18:04 | |
Although we desperately need it, | 18:10 | |
our problem is not | 18:13 | |
a lack of education. | 18:17 | |
We need it in this day and time, | 18:19 | |
but that is not our problem. | 18:23 | |
In the minds of many money is not the root | 18:26 | |
but the cure of all evil. | 18:31 | |
But that is not so. | 18:35 | |
Yes there could be benefits from lowering the | 18:41 | |
price of gasoline or putting a computer | 18:45 | |
in to the hands and the reach of every child. | 18:50 | |
But I declare, | 18:54 | |
this would not solve the problem. | 18:55 | |
I was reading and listening | 19:01 | |
not so long ago | 19:04 | |
to the pitcher from Atlanta | 19:05 | |
who is only 20 years old, the Atlanta Braves pitcher. | 19:09 | |
Heard all of the comments concerning what he said, | 19:14 | |
what the league said that he ought to do, | 19:17 | |
but it occurred to me that at 20 years old, | 19:21 | |
he learned his speech from somebody else. | 19:26 | |
Killer children are repeating patterns of hate, | 19:31 | |
premeditation, and violence | 19:36 | |
that have been taught to them. | 19:41 | |
Cradle cursors, unruly school boys, | 19:46 | |
and mud slinging politicians come from | 19:52 | |
the same bundle of life. | 19:55 | |
The ark is testimony | 20:00 | |
to a great moral divide. | 20:03 | |
And a choice from which we can not escape. | 20:06 | |
Either we enter the ark and be saved, | 20:13 | |
or we stay where we are | 20:18 | |
and perish. | 20:21 | |
In this regard salvation is no less than an ordeal. | 20:25 | |
Surely it was an ordeal for the savior. | 20:29 | |
See the first moment of that ordeal when he is | 20:32 | |
approached by the tempter, | 20:35 | |
who would cause him to disobey the father, | 20:38 | |
facing the frown of the father. | 20:41 | |
For forgiving sin was bad enough. | 20:44 | |
The only experience that could be worse would be | 20:48 | |
forfeiting the sustaining power of the spirit | 20:52 | |
for disobedience, | 20:56 | |
this power of the spirit would raise him. | 20:59 | |
This is the power that sets us in the ark. | 21:03 | |
This is the power that sustains us | 21:06 | |
in the midst of our times and saves us | 21:10 | |
from a perishing world. | 21:15 | |
The ark | 21:19 | |
marks a moral moment. | 21:21 | |
When we can no longer negotiate, | 21:26 | |
straddle the fence, bide time, | 21:29 | |
bargain for a reprieve. | 21:34 | |
These moment leave an indelible mark | 21:38 | |
upon our existence. | 21:43 | |
We come to that point | 21:46 | |
where we must do this, | 21:48 | |
where we must make the move, | 21:51 | |
where we must act now. | 21:55 | |
The spirit says to us, come here. | 21:59 | |
Take this stand, | 22:03 | |
help this soul. | 22:06 | |
Enter the door immediately, | 22:10 | |
or I cannot help you. | 22:13 | |
The ark marks the moral moment | 22:17 | |
after which there is not another chance. | 22:21 | |
It is an ordeal. | 22:26 | |
In that we want to do one more thing. | 22:28 | |
Hold out for one more day. | 22:33 | |
Take care of one more detail. | 22:36 | |
But no such latitude is available. | 22:39 | |
The door of the ark, like Lent, | 22:43 | |
slows us in our tracks. | 22:46 | |
If it were not for Lent then such periods of reflection, | 22:50 | |
we could easily be overwhelmed by the waters | 22:54 | |
of routine business, allegiances, and distractions. | 22:58 | |
If it were not for Lent. | 23:04 | |
What could they do on the ark? | 23:08 | |
They surely could not carry on in the way | 23:11 | |
that God was judging. | 23:15 | |
What could they do in the ark? | 23:16 | |
This was no place for family feuds, | 23:20 | |
this was no time for little picky stuff. | 23:24 | |
For arguments that didn't amount to much. | 23:27 | |
Many petty differences, swiftly are removed | 23:31 | |
when the water keeps on rising. | 23:36 | |
Enough water will get anybody's attention, | 23:39 | |
even the best swimmer. | 23:42 | |
We would have written a different script | 23:46 | |
in our lives perhaps, | 23:49 | |
but we can be thankful for that moment | 23:52 | |
that forced us into the ark. | 23:56 | |
The ark for the Christian is data, | 24:02 | |
primary reality. | 24:06 | |
With it illusion is stripped away. | 24:08 | |
And we are shown of the false notion | 24:14 | |
that there is some other normal world of luxury. | 24:18 | |
Over against which the ark is a place | 24:24 | |
of privation. | 24:30 | |
I declare to you today, | 24:32 | |
life in Christ is real. | 24:35 | |
The world passes away with all of its lusts. | 24:40 | |
Last week in class I was showing some students | 24:47 | |
some old sermons of mine, | 24:51 | |
some were written I suppose 20 years ago. | 24:55 | |
My point was to illustrate to them, | 24:59 | |
how everybody grows. Don't be frustrated because of | 25:02 | |
where you are now, everybody grows. | 25:04 | |
I look back on some of that stuff now and I pray | 25:07 | |
in retrospect, Lord forgive me and bless those people | 25:10 | |
who had to listen to that stuff. | 25:15 | |
Maybe I ought to be praying now, Lord help these folk | 25:18 | |
who have to listen to this. | 25:23 | |
But I'd like to think I've grown some in 30 years. | 25:24 | |
So I wanted them to see what it looked like, | 25:30 | |
what my work looked like at an earlier stage. | 25:32 | |
Well among the observations that they made was | 25:37 | |
when you start putting the notes here, I see the script | 25:40 | |
but when you start putting the notes here, | 25:43 | |
some of it is written in black and some of it red. | 25:45 | |
They could tell it wasn't written in computer font | 25:48 | |
so they couldn't understand how in the world is | 25:51 | |
some of it black and some of it red. | 25:53 | |
And I began to think about what they didn't understand, | 25:57 | |
so I decided to explain a little bit about the | 26:01 | |
old fashioned type writer. | 26:03 | |
That came with a black and red ribbon, | 26:06 | |
they looked at me like I was crazy. | 26:08 | |
I said I'm gonna blow their minds sure enough now, | 26:11 | |
I said there was a third set and a white set and | 26:13 | |
for cutting to stencil, they said what's a stencil? | 26:15 | |
(laughing) | 26:18 | |
And I took a few moments and I begin to talk with them | 26:20 | |
about an earlier time, Maurice, | 26:24 | |
when field work checks weren't so big. | 26:29 | |
And when it didn't cost so much to live, | 26:32 | |
I lived in a community not far from here. | 26:35 | |
Paid 50 dollars a month for half of a duplex, | 26:38 | |
and in the winter time I went and found some wood | 26:42 | |
and split the wood in the yard and made some fire | 26:45 | |
in the stove so I could keep warm in the morning. | 26:48 | |
I told them about how I made sure I had a good | 26:53 | |
pair of shoes so I could hike all over town to | 26:56 | |
my field work assignment in Edgemont and across | 26:59 | |
the Hayti and North Carolina central. | 27:02 | |
Anywhere I wanted to go I just walked. | 27:05 | |
And the semester, the Summer before my last year, | 27:08 | |
I took my field work check. | 27:12 | |
A full 1300 dollars. | 27:15 | |
Took 600 dollars out of that, made a down payment on | 27:18 | |
a new car that cost me 56 dollars a month for three years. | 27:21 | |
And they looked at me and they wanted to know | 27:28 | |
how in the world could anybody go though that | 27:29 | |
for theological education, how could you go through that? | 27:33 | |
They were complaining because they didn't have enough | 27:37 | |
money to make the payments on, you know what kind | 27:39 | |
of cars they drive now, I know what I gave my children. | 27:42 | |
And in the midst of it it occurred to me that we | 27:47 | |
were having a disconnect. | 27:49 | |
Because I did not experience this period as privation | 27:52 | |
at all, I walked away with a degree in electrical | 27:56 | |
engineering and turned my back on that career | 28:01 | |
with my eyes wide open. | 28:04 | |
During those days I didn't have any money | 28:07 | |
and I didn't have any debt. | 28:09 | |
That's not really such a bad way to live. | 28:11 | |
No money, no debt. | 28:15 | |
Plenty of exercise from walking, all the time | 28:18 | |
I needed to read and pray, and give service | 28:21 | |
to God and those who needed the service | 28:26 | |
that I could render. | 28:29 | |
For me, that was good life. | 28:32 | |
Like living in the ark. | 28:37 | |
Seen from the ark, | 28:41 | |
the world is not a place of luxury. | 28:44 | |
Seen from the ark the world is the scene of death. | 28:49 | |
From the ark the world is under judgment. | 28:56 | |
It is as if the fast forward button has been pushed. | 29:01 | |
And we can see all the way to the end, | 29:07 | |
all of the gruesome and gory detail. | 29:11 | |
Actually if the truth is told, | 29:16 | |
there are some of us who are in the ark | 29:20 | |
because God allowed us to go to the end of that story, | 29:24 | |
right to the edge, to the precipice and then gave us | 29:28 | |
the privilege of coming back. | 29:32 | |
The ark is the place where we can see this edge. | 29:35 | |
There are some who are in the ark because they | 29:41 | |
were nearbout at their limit. | 29:45 | |
Thanks be to God that it is possible to come back | 29:48 | |
from the limit. | 29:52 | |
I don't know about you but I'm glad that he saved me | 29:54 | |
before I didn't have another chance and that | 29:59 | |
love lifted me when nothing else could help. | 30:01 | |
Can you see the scene in the ark. | 30:07 | |
Listen to the son who thanks Noah for pulling him in | 30:11 | |
the door at the very last second just before God | 30:15 | |
shut the door. | 30:19 | |
They were not so concerned in the ark about | 30:21 | |
menus and recipes. | 30:23 | |
I don't suppose they had too much roasted lamb or | 30:26 | |
fresh baked barley bread, they were doing good on | 30:30 | |
the ark to have some dried fruit | 30:33 | |
and a few berries to eat. | 30:37 | |
But that was not privation, why? | 30:40 | |
Because outside of the ark | 30:43 | |
there was destruction and death. | 30:46 | |
Ration this day, maybe nothing the next day, | 30:50 | |
but even that was not privation. | 30:53 | |
The frame of reference to which we are brought in Lent | 30:58 | |
on the ark is not one wherein there is privation. | 31:03 | |
For serving God and drawing close to God over against | 31:09 | |
some other alternative that we might called luxury. | 31:13 | |
What we call luxury | 31:18 | |
is a world that is under judgment. | 31:20 | |
The perspective changes when the ark is the datum | 31:25 | |
of our reality. | 31:30 | |
Thank God for Lent, thank God for Lent, | 31:33 | |
it changes our perspective, gives us another datum. | 31:35 | |
The devotion and discipline of Lent are not a matter | 31:39 | |
of agony to be endured for 40 days after which we | 31:42 | |
return to normal life. | 31:45 | |
Lent, like the ark, is normal. | 31:48 | |
Whatever you give up for God can be done without, | 31:51 | |
whatever we get when we are close to God | 31:56 | |
is precisely what we need. | 31:58 | |
In times of devotion when we are uniquely turned | 32:01 | |
toward the service of God and our fellow man | 32:06 | |
and fellow woman. | 32:10 | |
We come to the point where we know what God | 32:12 | |
needs from us all the time. | 32:16 | |
As a witness to a world that is being redeemed. | 32:20 | |
What we call sacrifice, | 32:24 | |
is what we really need | 32:28 | |
in order to live. | 32:32 | |
Going from the ark there is no guarantee that the | 32:34 | |
promise of God | 32:38 | |
is insufficient, when we go from the ark | 32:42 | |
the guarantee is God's promise. | 32:46 | |
God has given the sign of the rainbow, | 32:50 | |
a word of promise, and that is enough. | 32:53 | |
People of the ark can no longer live for themselves | 32:56 | |
for they know themselves as though who have been saved, | 33:01 | |
who have been spared, who have been delivered. | 33:04 | |
Ark knowledge is that | 33:09 | |
we too could have been destroyed, | 33:13 | |
we could have been lost, we could have been overwhelmed, | 33:16 | |
we could have been swept under just like those who | 33:19 | |
did not make it through the door. | 33:23 | |
More, we would not have even known the direction | 33:26 | |
in which to go for safety and refuge had someone | 33:31 | |
not declared with persistence that this is the way | 33:34 | |
of life. | 33:40 | |
Ark knowledge puts a different stamp on our conciseness. | 33:42 | |
In the ark we think differently about the latest | 33:47 | |
sect of immigrants to arrive in our communities. | 33:50 | |
We can not join David Duke and others | 33:55 | |
who raise invectives against them. | 33:59 | |
From the ark we have more to say to child killers | 34:03 | |
and gang members, then prosecute them like adults. | 34:07 | |
We see addicts and homeless ones as persons in search | 34:14 | |
of the same love and nurture that we have found | 34:19 | |
in the ark. | 34:24 | |
For those of us who are saved, | 34:27 | |
ministry is not luxury. | 34:29 | |
It's a small gesture toward the ark. | 34:33 | |
It is a word of gratitude to the one who opened | 34:38 | |
the door and who let us come in. | 34:41 | |
Ministry is a way of saying, Lord I thank you. | 34:46 | |
That of all the families on the Earth you chose me. | 34:52 | |
I was a liar, I was a cheater, | 34:58 | |
I was a crook, | 35:02 | |
I was maybe even I am | 35:04 | |
part of my generation, but you reached out, | 35:09 | |
you pulled me in before the door was shut. | 35:14 | |
And so the summons is, to take the life of the ark | 35:20 | |
in to the world God is seeking to save. | 35:25 | |
Lent is a time to repent | 35:31 | |
for any instance, any moment, | 35:35 | |
in which we are tempted | 35:39 | |
to regard our life in Christ | 35:42 | |
as underprivileged existence, | 35:46 | |
over against some luxury that is seen in a world | 35:49 | |
that is under God's judgment. | 35:54 | |
Your deal of salvation orders the lives | 35:58 | |
of those who live in the ark of God. | 36:03 | |
By the knowledge of the God of the ark | 36:09 | |
who promises unfailing love, devotion, | 36:14 | |
and never ending blessing. | 36:20 | |
So join me in asking our God | 36:25 | |
to accept our thanks and praise | 36:29 | |
for all that has been done for us. | 36:34 | |
Specifically | 36:38 | |
I'm thankful today for salvation | 36:40 | |
which is no less than life in the ark. | 36:45 | |
Amen. | 36:52 |