Life Ain't Like Hollywood
My primary text comes
from Hebrews 12:1-2: Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses
surrounding us, let us lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily
besets us and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing
our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set
before Him endured the cross, despising the shame and has sat down at the right
hand of the Father.
I want to focus our attention
today and to remind us all, that our faith is built on nothing less than Jesus’
blood and His righteousness. We dare not trust anything else, but rather wholly
lean on Jesus Name. It must be on Christ the solid rock that we stand. All
other ground is sinking sand.
That’s not just an old
church hymn with which many of you are familiar. It is a solid truth rooted
firmly in the words of Holy Scripture.
Our faith and our
confident hope for the forgiveness of sins and for eternal life must all and in
every way be about Jesus. It’s not about the church, any particular church, or
every church. It’s not about our family, our children, our spouse, our parents.
It is not about any person in history who has ever lived with the only
exception of Jesus Christ. And it is most certainly not about you. Or Me.
If we ever hope for our
lives to have purpose, if we ever hope for our lives to mean something – even
for many of us at our advancing ages – If we ever hope to be fruitful for the
kingdom of God and for eternity, then our focus must be on Jesus alone. Period.
End of sentence.
Honestly, I do not know
how to be more clear without being boringly redundant.
Let me give you an
example of what I mean about our focus on Jesus. I know a woman, a godly woman
– certainly with her own faults and sins (who isn't?) – years ago she told me
something I have never forgotten. I want to share it with you because it helps
make the point I am trying to make throughout this message.
After the death of her
beloved husband, even in the middle of her grief over her terrible loss, she told
me that she looked up at heaven and said to God, “I guess it’s You and me now.”
I will never forget
those words – “It’s You and me, now.”
She had her focus right.
Here is yet another story.
A more personal one: Two years ago, almost to the day, I brushed a kiss to my
mother’s warm cheek on a Sunday afternoon, after I’d finished preaching my
message at the 55+ community where she lived. I could not know that the
following Sunday I would be touching her cold hand as she lay in her casket.
A few days later, when my
wife and I returned home, two of her friends
organized a memorial
for mom at the place where she lived. I was to give her eulogy. And I remember
telling the Lord, “Lord, I can’t do this. I can’t stand in the same place I
stood just two weeks ago, and mom was sitting in the front row seat as I
preached. I don’t know if I can even and ever return to this apartment complex,
for all the memories it holds.”
And this is what God
said to me: “This is not about you. It is not about your mother. It is about
Me.”
In other words,
“Richard, focus your attention and the attention on everyone here, on Jesus.”
Please hear me. There
is something terribly wrong with our Christianity, there is something terribly wrong
with our faith if we put ANY of our focus
– even the most
miniscule focus – anywhere else with regards to faith and hope and eternal life
– anywhere else other than on Jesus. To put even an iota of focus elsewhere is
to take that iota away from the One who uniquely and definitively deserves the
110% pressed down shaken together and running over focus of our hearts, our
hopes, our dreams, and our faith.
And since I am giving
examples of what TO DO, let me give you now an example of what we should NOT do
– and why we should not do it.
I had a sad
conversation with a woman recently. She confessed to me her deep longing for a
family of her own, but she has never been married and has never had children. It’s
something she has always wanted from the time she was a little girl. And, she
told me, it is something she believes God would use to draw her closer to
Himself. But every time she thought she had the opportunity, a door slammed in
her face. And now she thinks of herself as too old, and that her chances of
marriage and family are blessings she will never enjoy.
But here is the most
tragic part of what she said to me: “Why am I denied something that other
people get as a matter of course? It feels like God doesn't want me to be any
closer to him. I think He has allowed me to be the person I am only to have my
life completely wasted.”
Let me first say I can empathize with the woman.
I have several friends in similar situation as she. But as much as we cannot
understand the situations we often find ourselves in – even when we hate the
situations we find ourselves in, it does not make sense on any level to think God
would put us in ANY situation in order to push us away from Himself.
The Father sent His beloved Son to die an
excruciating death for each of us and all of us – to DRAW us to Himself. There
is nothing that God desires more for us than that we come closer to Him.
The apostle Paul speaks of this very
thing in Romans 8:32-39: “He who did not spare His own Son,
but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely
give us all things? . . . Who [or what] will separate us from the love
of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution,
or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Just as it is
written, For Your sake we are being put to death all day long; We were
considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” But in all these things we
overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am
convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor
principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor
height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us
from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Paul didn’t say it, but he could just as easily have added another
paragraph: “Shall loneliness, or broken
hearts, shattered dreams, destroyed hopes, unreconciled families, debilitating
illness, or the death of those we love – NONE of these thing will be able to
separate us from the God who loves us so much that He sacrificed His Son to die
in our place so that we might share our eternity with Him.”
And
now listen to what the apostle wrote while in prison. You’ll find it in
Philippians 1:20 “I will not be
put to shame in anything, but that with all boldness, Christ
will even now, as always, be exalted in my body, whether by life or
by death.”
In other words, and to make application to our lives today, Christ alone
–not another person, not the church, not ourselves, but Christ alone should be
exalted in our lives even in our loneliness, in our sadness, in our chronic
pain, in our financial woes, in our problems with our children, in problems
with our spouse, our parents . . . on
and on.
Hear it again – what can separate us from God’s love for us? And what
would God EVER bring to us that He wants to push us AWAY from Him? In all the
circumstances of life, God has designed for us to glorify Christ in and through
our circumstances.
Listen!
Life just
doesn’t turn out like Hollywood love stories. And because sin has infected and
infested every facet of life, we always face two choices in bad or sad or
tragic situations: We can carry our cross, or fling it to the ground and go
our own way. We can take the chalice of suffering God has given us, or we can spill
the contents on the dirt and mix our own drink. And may God help us to not
do something we will terribly regret later.
But what can we do when
our trust in God is just not up to some of the desperate challenges we face? What
can we do when we believe God has given us too much to bear?
Listen, I know what it
means to have a feeble faith that is not up to the challenges that all of us
sometimes face when life’s storms thrash our little lifeboat up and down and
side to side – that we feel like we are going to throw up.
So, what can we do when
our faith falters? It is this: Even if we cannot trust Him, even if our
emotions overrule our faith – there is still yet one thing we can do: We
can still OBEY Him. Even if we don’t want to: We can obey Him anyway.
Obedience is an act of
the will. What do you CHOOSE to do, what do I choose to do when heaven seems as
brass and we think God has turned His back on us?
You remember Job’s
devastation. In one hour, he lost his ten children and all his vast wealth. A
short time later he lost his health to excruciating boils all over his body.
But I am so glad his story is in Scripture because it can encourage each of us.
Here is what he said in chapter six of his book: “It is still my
consolation, and I rejoice in unsparing pain, that I have not denied the words
of the Holy One.”
If Job could still obey
God despite his multiple tragedies – so can I. And so can you.
In 1970 Simon and Garfunkel wrote Bridge Over
Troubled Water. Here are some of the lyrics: When you're weary, feeling
small, when tears are in your eyes, I will dry them all. I'm on your side, oh,
when times get rough and friends just can't be found - Like a bridge over
troubled water, I will lay me down; Like a bridge over troubled water, I will
lay me down.
When you're down and out, when you're on the street, when evening
falls so hard, I will comfort you. I'll take your part, oh, when darkness comes
and pain is all around. Like a bridge over troubled water, I will lay me down.
Like a bridge over troubled water, I will lay me down.
Who is a bridge over troubled waters like Jesus? Who but He ever
laid down His life to span the tumultuous gulf between where we were, where we
are, and where we can be? Jesus told us: “In this world you will have
troubled waters. But be of good cheer – I have overcome the world.” That is, of course, a paraphrase of Jesus’
promise in John 16:33
During the Last Supper, the Lord Jesus said to His disciples, “You are those who have stood by Me in My trials.” (Luke 22:28) He knew what was about to happen to Him in just
a few short hours. I’m certain the Lord's voice was rich with the emotions of
gratefulness, even of thanksgiving.
But one day when I read that passage, my mind shifted
direction. I imagined Jesus looking at His 21st century disciples – you and me
and all those who are still following Him – I imagined He looks at us and says with
equal emotion: “You are those who have stood by Me in your trials.”
Please hear that last clause again. Don’t miss the subtle change.
“You are those who have stood by me in YOUR trials.”
And there is something else in this Last Supper conversation
that we must not miss. After the Lord thanked them for staying with Him in His
trials, He turned to Peter: “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has demanded
permission to sift you like wheat; but I have prayed for you, that your faith
may not fail; and you, when once you have turned again, strengthen your
brothers.”
Christian: Never think the devil doesn’t want to sift you
like wheat, to break your faith, to twist his arrows in your gut until you
bleed out. But also, never forget – your Savior, your High Priest, Jesus, prays
for you just like He prayed for Peter.
In your grief, in every gut-wrenching sorrow, Jesus prays for
you. Moment by moment, He prays for you. And when you come through to the other
side of the tragedy, He says to you what He said to Peter: Strengthen your
brethren.
Christian: Stand by Jesus in the midst of your trials – and even
in your disasters. Stay close. He will never, ever desert you – and He will
never, ever push anyone away who comes to Him in humble faith.
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