June 22, 2003 - LESSON: Matthew 7:28-29

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INTRODUCTION:

Roger L. Ray, senior minister of the National Avenue Christian Church in Springfield, Missouri, tells of a local physician who was driving between hospital calls one evening, exceeding the speed limit rather shamelessly in an attempt to make up for lost time.

Suddenly a police car pulled up behind him and turned on the lights. Having some considerable experience in both speeding and getting caught, the doctor picked up his stethoscope and held it up for the policeman to see in hopes of communicating that he was on a medical emergency.

Yet the police officer continued in pursuit with no regard to the physician's signals. Once more the doctor waved his stethoscope in the air, this time more dramatically, in hopes of conveying the importance of his mission. But when the physician looked into his rear-view mirror to see whether the police officer got the message, he saw a smiling officer waving his own symbol of authority in the air -- his revolver.

1. Both symbols of authority are necessary.

2. One is more powerful and trumps the other.

3. This is often the way it is in the real world.

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MAIN BODY:

1. It is necessary for us to decide between authorities.

The following conversation was cited in one of the Montreal newspapers.

"Please divert your course 15 degrees to avert a collision."

"Recommend you divert YOUR course 15 degrees."

"This is the captain of a U.S. Navy ship. I say again: Divert your course."

"No, I say again: Divert YOUR course."

"This is an aircraft carrier of the United States Navy. We are a large warship. Divert your course at once!"

"This is a lighthouse. Your call."

1. It's your call.

2. You decide.

2. There are those who come to believe that they can be their own authority.

1. Ernest Henley wrote Invictus near the end of an enforced stay at the Infirmary in Edinburgh, Scotland

Out of the night that covers me.
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be,
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced or cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how straight the gate
How charged with punishments the scroll,.
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul

2. I do not want to critique Henley.

1. He was writing in the hospital

2. He was coping with a serious and often fatal disease.

3. I do not know is mind or the circumstances of his writing.

4. There is a dangerous attitude that may be expressed in these few lines.

3. There is a way in which we are the masters of our fate.

4. There is a way in which we are the captains of our soul.

5. To whom will be give our allegiance?

6. Who will we accept as an authority?

7. We need something that is more powerful than Bruce Nolan.

"Bruce Nolan (Jim Carrey) is a whiny TV news reporter whose human-interest stories don't interest him at all. His girlfriend (Jennifer Aniston) loves him despite his negative take on the world. But when Bruce is fired, he asks once again why God has decided to give him so much grief. It turns out that God (Morgan Freeman) is disguised as a janitor and is tired of hearing Bruce's complaints. The almighty offers Bruce his all-encompassing job, giving him absolute power for one week in the hopes of proving to him how tough it is to run the world."

Bruce Almighty is the name of the movie.

Inset into the poster are the words: "In Bruce We Trust?"

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7. Again the question is to whom do we listen, its your call.

1. Try the philosophical or theological experts.

Sean Gonsalves ⁽¹⁾ writes an Easter parable for preachers & theologians, and really for all people.

He remembers a very special Easter sermon.

"The Preacher said:

"I am going to end this morning by telling you something that happened when I was in seminary," he said, dabbing his forehead with a white handkerchief that had been folded into a perfect square.

"I went to the University of Chicago Divinity School.

"Every year they used to have what was called 'Baptist Day.'

"It was a day when they invited the entire Baptist community in the area to visit the school, basically because they wanted the Baptist dollars to keep coming in," he explained.

"On this day everyone was to bring a bag lunch to be eaten outdoors in a grassy picnic area giving the students, faculty and visitors a chance to mingle.

"And every 'Baptist Day' the school would invite one of the greatest minds in theological education to give a lecture. This one year the great Paul Tillich came to speak."

"The preacher paused to sip some water.

"Dr. Tillich spoke for two and a half hours, proving that the historical Resurrection was false.

"He quoted scholar after scholar and book after book, concluding that since there was no such thing as the historical Resurrection,

"the African American religious tradition was groundless, emotional mumbo jumbo, because it was based on a relationship with a risen Jesus, who, in fact, never rose from the dead in any literal sense."

"The preacher told us that Dr. Tillich ended his talk with a sweeping, "Are there any questions?"

"The silence in the packed lecture hall was deafening.

"Then, finally, after about 30 seconds--it seemed like five minutes an old, dark-skinned preacher with a head full of short-cropped woolly white hair stood up in the back of the auditorium.

"Docta Tillich, I got a question," he said as all eyes turned toward him.

He reached into his bag lunch and pulled out an apple.

"Docta Tillich..." CRUNCH, MUNCH, MUNCH, MUNCH...

"My question is a simple question."

CRUNCH, MUNCH, MUNCH, MUNCH...

"Now, I ain't never read them books you read..."

CRUNCH, MUNCH, MUNCH, MUNCH...

"and I can't recite the Scriptures in the original Greek..."

CRUNCH, MUNCH, MUNCH, MUNCH...

"l don't know nothin' about Niebuhr and Heidegger..."

CRUNCH, MUNCH, MUNCH, MUNCH...

He finished the apple.

Then he began to lick his fingertips and pick his teeth.

"All I wanna know is: This apple I just ate--was it bitter or sweet?"

Dr. Tillich paused for a moment and answered in exemplary scholarly fashion:

"I cannot possibly answer that question, for I haven't tasted your apple."

The white-haired preacher dropped the core of his apple into his crumpled paper bag,

looked up at Dr. Tillich and said calmly,

"Neither have you tasted my Jesus."

The 1,000-plus in attendance could not contain themselves. The auditorium erupted with roaring laughter, cheers and applause. Paul Tillich promptly thanked his audience and left the lectern.

2. It's your call.

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3. Also we need to come to the realization that we are not strong enough to stand alone against the antagonist of humanity.

1. Jesus said very clearly in Luke 16.13 that you will serve one or the other

1. You cannot serve God and mammon.

2. Mammon is a Chaldee or Syriac word meaning "wealth" or "riches" (Luke 16:9-11); also, by personification, the god of riches (Matt. 6:24; Luke 16:9-11).

2. What we can do is to follow the example of the Apostles.

1. In Acts 4, Peter and John heal a man at the Beautiful Gate and are called in before the Council.

1. They are commanded not to preach or teach in the name of Jesus.

2. In verse 19 Peter and John respond: "Whether it is right in God's sight to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge; for we cannot keep from speaking about what we have seen and heard."

3. In Acts 5 the Apostles are thrown into jail.

1. When the whole council called for the apostles to be brought from the jail, they were not there.

2. Again they were standing in the temple courts preaching and teaching.

3. The conversation was a contentious one.

²⁷When they had brought them, they had them stand before the council. The high priest questioned them, ²⁸saying, "We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name, yet here you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and you are determined to bring this man's blood on us."

²⁹But Peter and the apostles answered, "We must obey God rather than any human authority.

4. We must obey God rather than a human authority.

5. This is a lesson that the Christian community still has not fully learned.

3. Jesus is the authority.

1. He taught as one who had authority and not as the scribes.

2. He relied on an understanding provided by the Holy Spirit.

3. He did not as the Scribes did rely on human authority.

Stephen Carter in The Culture of Disbelief ⁽²⁾ writes:

"A religion is, at its heart, a way of denying the authority of the rest of the world; it's a way of saying to fellow human beings and to the state those fellow humans have erected, No, I will not accede to your will."

4. This is so that we can accede to the teachings of Jesus.

4. Why do we listen and answer the call?

1. Jesus also wants each of us, you and me, to become an authority.

This story is told by Nicholas K. Humphrey ⁽³⁾

During a dock strike in London, enormous trucks were going in and out across the picket lines with impressive notices: "By the Authority of H. M. Government," "By the Permission of the Trades Union Congress," "By the Authority of the Ministry of War." Among them appeared a tiny donkey cart, driven by a little old man in a bashed-in bowler, and on the cart was a banner: "By My Own Bloody Authority." Sometimes we need to proceed toward the light, not on the basis of what others are saying or on the basis of abstract truths and doctrinal positions, but on the basis of the light God has given to us.

2. Under Christ, we are to be our own authority

¹¹The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, ¹²to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, ¹³until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. ¹⁴We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people's trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. ¹⁵But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, ¹⁶from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body's growth in building itself up in love, (Ephesians 4:11-16, NRSVA).

5. The role of authority is one that is vital to the spiritual health and well-being of the Christian.

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CONCLUSION:

1. Richard P. Schowalter, writing in "Igniting a New Generation of Believers" reports (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995), 94.

"When I was a university student, I was unsuccessfully evangelized by almost every Christian group on campus. My basic response to their preaching was, "How can I believe when I look at the way the church lives?" They answered, "Don't look at the church; look at Jesus." I now believe that statement is one of the saddest in the history of the church. It puts Jesus on a pedestal apart from the people who name his name. Belief in him becomes an abstraction removed from any demonstration of its meaning in the world. Such thinking is a denial of what is most basic to the gospel: incarnation. People should be able to look at the way we live and begin to understand what the gospel is about. Our lives must tell them who Jesus is and what he cares about."

2. We have to deal with many authority figures.

1. Some are like the scribes.

2. They are all temporal.

3. Jesus taught with authority.

1. His authority was not of human, but divine origin.

2. His teachings can be tested and found beneficial for the person who seeks to employ them.

1. (Sean Gonsalves, a reporter for The Cape Cod Times, Hyannis, MA, writes a regular nationally syndicated column. The following column by Sean Gonsalves appeared at Easter time. Dist. by Universal Press Syndicate. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.)

2. Stephen Carter, The Culture of Disbelief (New York: Basic Books, 1993), 41.

3. This story is told by Nicholas K. Humphrey, a theoretical psychologist from Cambridge, in "The Uses of Consciousness" in Speculations: The Reality Club, ed. John Brockman (New York: Prentice Hall, 1990), 79.

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