Read the Directions
Sermon
Renewal of the New
Sermons For Sundays After Pentecost
Late in the evening before his little son's birthday, a father was trying to put together a complicated toy as a birthday present. He was not making very good progress. There were a lot of parts in that shipping carton. He realized that he should have begun this days ago, but he had left it until the last hour. Yet he had confidence that he could complete the job with his mechanical knowledge. In his haste, he cut his hand badly on a sharp corner, and it bled profusely until bandaged. When he had finished, the handle was upside down, and the toy wouldn't work. Then he turned to the sheet of directions in the bottom of the shipping carton. He took the contraption completely apart and started over again. He groaned as he remembered the old adage, "When all else fails, read the directions."
God has given us directions in the Bible for putting a life together. We often say someone is "getting it all together." But many of us are trying to put a life together without reading God's directions. We suffer the same results as that father. We get hurt in the process, and what we put together on our own doesn't work in the end. The manufacturer of a product knows best how to put that disassembled product together. God is the manufacturer of life, the great Creator. He knows best how his product should be put together. One of his important sheets of directions is the book of Proverbs in the Old Testament, which is part of the wisdom literature, giving practical advice. The verses from the twenty-second chapter, constituting the first lesson for today, are part of that section called the very heart of Proverbs. In putting any life together, we must read the directions in God's holy Word.
Assemble The Parts
The first thing to do in putting any product together is to assemble the parts. Identify the parts and start relating them to each other. This is exactly what the author of Proverbs does in the opening verses of today's lesson. The first part of a fulfilling life is integrity of character. We read, "A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches, and favor is better than silver or gold." One of the daughters of William Howard Taft, III, was asked who she was. Her answer was, "My great-grandfather was President of the United States, my grandfather was a Senator from Ohio, my father was the Ambassador to Ireland -- and I am a Brownie." She took pride in her ancestors, but she also was proud of her integrity as a Brownie. "A good name" as spoken of in Proverbs means admirable character, and "favor" means a favorable reputation among those who know you. It could also include God looking with favor upon the quality of your life.
A successful, twenty-nine-year-old woman, who was an insurance executive in Phoenix, was dating a man who said that he was a professional football player. He was not playing that season, he explained, because he had been sidelined with a knee injury. She became suspicious, however, because this supposedly high-salaried player was always short of money. She hired a detective agency to investigate him. The agency discovered that this man was no football player, but an ex-convict who had worked this ruse on other women. He had already borrowed several thousand dollars from this woman. She never got it back. He represented a total lack of integrity.
Contrast this case with the story that Virginia Poehlein tells about her granddaughter. The girl came home from school one day looking downcast. She confessed to copying a word from another student's spelling test. "I wrote it down and it looked funny," she told her mother. "Then I saw her answer and knew it was right, so I changed mine." Her conscience was pricking her. The next day she came home happy. "We didn't finish our spelling test yesterday," she explained to her mother, 'so our teacher gave our papers back today." She smiled as she added, "I changed that word to the way I spelled it the first time." Her conscience was clear. Integrity is a basic piece in the assembly of a happy life. A fourteen-carat-gold reputation is worth more than all the gold in Fort Knox.
Another piece in the assembly of a fulfilling life is equality -- regarding all others as of equal worth in the sight of God. Proverbs says, "The rich and the poor meet together; the Lord is the maker of them all." God made both rich and poor. Our common origin is in him. Therefore one is not to be exalted over another. The letter of James in the New Testament insists on treating the poor like the rich. "Show no partiality ..." we read. "Has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which he has promised to those who love him?" We have often heard it said, "The ground is level at the foot of the Cross." This means that no one stands higher than another at Calvary. All are sinners. All in themselves are condemned by their sins before a holy God. All need the forgiveness offered through the Cross. All can receive it freely by trusting in the slain Lamb of God to reconcile them to the Father. We are all of equal worth in the eyes of God.
Still another piece necessary to bring a God-pleasing life together is justice. We must be fair and just in our dealings with others. Proverbs says it this way, "He who sows injustice will reap calamity, and the rod of his fury will fail." In other words, the rod by which he inflicts injustice upon others will be turned back to injure himself. This was true in the case of Leona Helmsley, the so-called hotel queen of New York City. She sowed injustice by not paying taxes on millions of dollars of income which she put to her personal advantage, claiming to the Internal Revenue Service that they were business expenses. A woman of vast wealth, she was once quoted as saying, "Only the little people pay taxes." In court she was convicted, and the judge who sentenced her accused this sixty-nine-year-old woman of "naked greed." He sentenced her to four years in prison, fined her 7.1 million dollars, added three years of probation and demanded 750 hours of community service in a home for infants born with an addiction to drugs. Leona Helmsley confessed in court, "I'm more humiliated and ashamed than anybody can ever imagine." Galatians said it this way, "Do not be deceived; God is not mocked, for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap."
Today's passage in Proverbs points out a fourth quality in a well assembled life -- generosity. "He who has a bountiful eye will be blessed," we read, "for he shares his bread with the poor." "A bountiful eye" is a delightful phrase for a person who sees the needs of the poor and shares generously with them. In Charlotte, North Carolina, a seventh grade school girl won a computer from a manufacturer because she had written the best essay on an assigned subject. She urgently wanted a computer, but she had read in the newspaper about a boy her age who had been hurt in an accident and who was fighting for his life in a hospital. This boy wanted to become a computer programmer like his dad, but now he was semiconscious, his legs broken, his jaws wired together. Thinking that a computer might increase the boy's desire to live, the girl gave to him the computer which she had won. It was a superb act of generosity. Later, the manufacturer, hearing of this, gave her another computer and also one for her school. Left to ourselves, we might look away from human need and toward our own desires. With "a bountiful eye" we look at human need, respond and are "blessed." James said, "Faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead."
Copy The Model
Along with the sheet of directions for the assembly of a shipped product usually come a diagram of the finished product and sketches of each step in assembling it. This simplifies the assembly by permitting one to copy the model. In Christ the world has its model of what God intended life on this earth to be. In "getting it together," we need to copy the model. The qualities which Proverbs recommends for assembling the good life are supremely illustrated in the life of Jesus Christ. Take the matter of integrity or having a good name. Christ made many promises to the world in the New Testament. Across almost 2,000 years not one of them has failed. Joshua appreciated the faithfulness of God. In his valedictory to the Hebrew nation in the book of the Bible bearing his name, he said, "Not one thing has failed of all the good things which the Lord your God promised concerning you." The integrity of the Lord with regard to all that he has promised is like the North Star in the night sky. It never varies in its location. God's constancy is from everlasting to everlasting.
The same is true with the justice of the Lord, which treats all alike. God plays no favorites with either the rich or the poor. This is symbolized by the arms of the cross being of equal length. Did you ever see a cross representing Christ that had a long arm stretched out horizontally on one side and a short arm on the other side? Never! Christ treats equally those on his right and those on his left -- the rich and the poor, the strong and the weak, the educated and the uneducated. As judge, he is not able to be bribed, and he is not guilty of anything for which he judges us.
In Columbia, South Carolina, a municipal judge who presided over drunken driving cases was himself convicted of drunken driving. His car hit another car at a stoplight, and his blood-alcohol level at the time was measured at 0.21, twice the legal intoxication limit of 0.10. In spite of that, he refused to resign, claiming that this would not impair his ability to be a judge in city court. Christ's justice does not come from a source like that. He was never fairly convicted of any wrong.
In generosity and concern for others, Christ is also the perfect example. He only lived for the good of others. What the prodigal son's father said to the disgruntled elder brother at the end of Jesus' parable is what the Lord says to us, "All that is mine is yours." No one can be more generous than that. We are in debt to God through Christ his Son for every breath that we draw, every beat of our hearts, every ounce of our strength, every dollar in our wallets, every skill that we have, and every good thought in our minds. All of them and much, much more are the gracious gifts of a bountiful God. Truly, he has "a bountiful eye." So, in putting together a life that pleases God and that can produce the greatest happiness, we have Christ for our model. God's sheet of directions for life gives illustrations for every step of the way, and all those illustrations come together in the life of Christ. If you want to "get it all together," read the directions in God's Word, assemble the parts of Christian character, and copy the model in Jesus Christ.
Use Resources Beyond Yourself
But now, there is a last step. In assembling a very complicated product, it is likely that one may have to draw upon resources beyond one's self. Shaping a human life in the image of God is the most complicated task of all. We'll never do it on our own. At this point we are going beyond the first lesson for today in Proverbs, but today's three Scripture lessons hang together. They form one piece. The lesson in Proverbs was never meant to stand alone on its own two feet and be sufficient in itself as good news. It bears a vital relationship to the other two lessons. For example, the Scripture from James points out, "Whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it." Everyone fails in at least one point to keep all God's commandments; there is no perfect person. Therefore, everyone is guilty of failing in the whole business. In putting our lives together, we fall short of what God requests. We have made a mess of it. Because this failure incurs divine judgment, we have become an endangered species. More than that, we are spiritually doomed.
Here is where the Gospel enters. Resources beyond ourselves are offered by God. Divine judgment upon our failures and upon our pride in our own capabilities in such a serious business is lifted for those who repent and trust in Christ because Christ satisfied that judgment when he died on the cross for us. His death spared us from our deaths, spiritually and eternally. His resurrection raises us to renewal of life here and now, as well as to the assurance of everlasting life with Christ in glory. As the famous artist Turner asked to be lashed to the mast of a ship and taken sailing through the most ferocious storms so that he could be precisely in the middle of the gale and thunder, so God's Son consented to be nailed to the cross so that in the very midst of the thunder and shrieking of divine judgment that was ours he might let us escape it as he died in our place. In our deep crisis of the human condition, we needed resources beyond ourselves.
In Greenwood, South Carolina, soon after a physical education teacher sat down to lunch in an elementary school cafeteria, a gunman burst into the cafeteria and opened fire with a .22 caliber revolver on some 100 students and teachers. This particular teacher, Kat Finkbeiner, threw her body over a girl to shield her. The gunman then entered a third-grade classroom. Finkbeiner followed and found him holding the revolver to the neck of an eight-year-old boy. She spoke to the man, and he pulled the gun away, but then he fired at her. The bullet struck her in the mouth and shattered her jaw. She survived and eventually received a Carnegie medal for heroism.
Marvelous as her sacrifice was, it doesn't hold a candle to what our Lord did for us. On Calvary's cross God literally threw his body over us to protect us from certain destruction. He didn't survive then, nor did he get a Carnegie medal for heroism. but he saved our lives. Later, by God's miracle, he did survive in his resurrection. Now he lives on high, and we continually pin our medals on him -- medals of praise and adoration and thanks and love. When Jesus asked his disciples in today's Gospel, "But who do you say that I am?" and Peter answered with one of the greatest four-word replies ever spoken, "You are the Christ," he didn't know it at the time, but today we see the whole plan of God's salvation through Christ hidden in those words. In cosmic terms, our hopeless human condition before an all-holy God demanded resources outside ourselves. God provided those resources free of charge in the greatest gift ever given -- his only Son, condemned as a criminal, crucified as a slave, buried as a reject, raised as a Savior and ascended as a Lord, all for us. Nobody can put a life together rightly without the saving grace of the Lord Jesus Christ as its chief resource, appropriated through repentance and faith.
When Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn accepted the Templeton Prize in Religion in 1983, he observed, "Western societies are losing more and more of their religious essence." His solution: "a determined quest for the warm hand of God, which we have so rashly and self-confidently spurned." That father, putting together his boy's birthday present, hurt himself and ended in failure on his own. We could do even worse in the far more important matter of putting together a life, unless -- unless we read the directions in God's holy Word, assemble the parts of Christian character, copy the model of Christ, and use the vast spiritual resources outside ourselves, available from God.
God has given us directions in the Bible for putting a life together. We often say someone is "getting it all together." But many of us are trying to put a life together without reading God's directions. We suffer the same results as that father. We get hurt in the process, and what we put together on our own doesn't work in the end. The manufacturer of a product knows best how to put that disassembled product together. God is the manufacturer of life, the great Creator. He knows best how his product should be put together. One of his important sheets of directions is the book of Proverbs in the Old Testament, which is part of the wisdom literature, giving practical advice. The verses from the twenty-second chapter, constituting the first lesson for today, are part of that section called the very heart of Proverbs. In putting any life together, we must read the directions in God's holy Word.
Assemble The Parts
The first thing to do in putting any product together is to assemble the parts. Identify the parts and start relating them to each other. This is exactly what the author of Proverbs does in the opening verses of today's lesson. The first part of a fulfilling life is integrity of character. We read, "A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches, and favor is better than silver or gold." One of the daughters of William Howard Taft, III, was asked who she was. Her answer was, "My great-grandfather was President of the United States, my grandfather was a Senator from Ohio, my father was the Ambassador to Ireland -- and I am a Brownie." She took pride in her ancestors, but she also was proud of her integrity as a Brownie. "A good name" as spoken of in Proverbs means admirable character, and "favor" means a favorable reputation among those who know you. It could also include God looking with favor upon the quality of your life.
A successful, twenty-nine-year-old woman, who was an insurance executive in Phoenix, was dating a man who said that he was a professional football player. He was not playing that season, he explained, because he had been sidelined with a knee injury. She became suspicious, however, because this supposedly high-salaried player was always short of money. She hired a detective agency to investigate him. The agency discovered that this man was no football player, but an ex-convict who had worked this ruse on other women. He had already borrowed several thousand dollars from this woman. She never got it back. He represented a total lack of integrity.
Contrast this case with the story that Virginia Poehlein tells about her granddaughter. The girl came home from school one day looking downcast. She confessed to copying a word from another student's spelling test. "I wrote it down and it looked funny," she told her mother. "Then I saw her answer and knew it was right, so I changed mine." Her conscience was pricking her. The next day she came home happy. "We didn't finish our spelling test yesterday," she explained to her mother, 'so our teacher gave our papers back today." She smiled as she added, "I changed that word to the way I spelled it the first time." Her conscience was clear. Integrity is a basic piece in the assembly of a happy life. A fourteen-carat-gold reputation is worth more than all the gold in Fort Knox.
Another piece in the assembly of a fulfilling life is equality -- regarding all others as of equal worth in the sight of God. Proverbs says, "The rich and the poor meet together; the Lord is the maker of them all." God made both rich and poor. Our common origin is in him. Therefore one is not to be exalted over another. The letter of James in the New Testament insists on treating the poor like the rich. "Show no partiality ..." we read. "Has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which he has promised to those who love him?" We have often heard it said, "The ground is level at the foot of the Cross." This means that no one stands higher than another at Calvary. All are sinners. All in themselves are condemned by their sins before a holy God. All need the forgiveness offered through the Cross. All can receive it freely by trusting in the slain Lamb of God to reconcile them to the Father. We are all of equal worth in the eyes of God.
Still another piece necessary to bring a God-pleasing life together is justice. We must be fair and just in our dealings with others. Proverbs says it this way, "He who sows injustice will reap calamity, and the rod of his fury will fail." In other words, the rod by which he inflicts injustice upon others will be turned back to injure himself. This was true in the case of Leona Helmsley, the so-called hotel queen of New York City. She sowed injustice by not paying taxes on millions of dollars of income which she put to her personal advantage, claiming to the Internal Revenue Service that they were business expenses. A woman of vast wealth, she was once quoted as saying, "Only the little people pay taxes." In court she was convicted, and the judge who sentenced her accused this sixty-nine-year-old woman of "naked greed." He sentenced her to four years in prison, fined her 7.1 million dollars, added three years of probation and demanded 750 hours of community service in a home for infants born with an addiction to drugs. Leona Helmsley confessed in court, "I'm more humiliated and ashamed than anybody can ever imagine." Galatians said it this way, "Do not be deceived; God is not mocked, for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap."
Today's passage in Proverbs points out a fourth quality in a well assembled life -- generosity. "He who has a bountiful eye will be blessed," we read, "for he shares his bread with the poor." "A bountiful eye" is a delightful phrase for a person who sees the needs of the poor and shares generously with them. In Charlotte, North Carolina, a seventh grade school girl won a computer from a manufacturer because she had written the best essay on an assigned subject. She urgently wanted a computer, but she had read in the newspaper about a boy her age who had been hurt in an accident and who was fighting for his life in a hospital. This boy wanted to become a computer programmer like his dad, but now he was semiconscious, his legs broken, his jaws wired together. Thinking that a computer might increase the boy's desire to live, the girl gave to him the computer which she had won. It was a superb act of generosity. Later, the manufacturer, hearing of this, gave her another computer and also one for her school. Left to ourselves, we might look away from human need and toward our own desires. With "a bountiful eye" we look at human need, respond and are "blessed." James said, "Faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead."
Copy The Model
Along with the sheet of directions for the assembly of a shipped product usually come a diagram of the finished product and sketches of each step in assembling it. This simplifies the assembly by permitting one to copy the model. In Christ the world has its model of what God intended life on this earth to be. In "getting it together," we need to copy the model. The qualities which Proverbs recommends for assembling the good life are supremely illustrated in the life of Jesus Christ. Take the matter of integrity or having a good name. Christ made many promises to the world in the New Testament. Across almost 2,000 years not one of them has failed. Joshua appreciated the faithfulness of God. In his valedictory to the Hebrew nation in the book of the Bible bearing his name, he said, "Not one thing has failed of all the good things which the Lord your God promised concerning you." The integrity of the Lord with regard to all that he has promised is like the North Star in the night sky. It never varies in its location. God's constancy is from everlasting to everlasting.
The same is true with the justice of the Lord, which treats all alike. God plays no favorites with either the rich or the poor. This is symbolized by the arms of the cross being of equal length. Did you ever see a cross representing Christ that had a long arm stretched out horizontally on one side and a short arm on the other side? Never! Christ treats equally those on his right and those on his left -- the rich and the poor, the strong and the weak, the educated and the uneducated. As judge, he is not able to be bribed, and he is not guilty of anything for which he judges us.
In Columbia, South Carolina, a municipal judge who presided over drunken driving cases was himself convicted of drunken driving. His car hit another car at a stoplight, and his blood-alcohol level at the time was measured at 0.21, twice the legal intoxication limit of 0.10. In spite of that, he refused to resign, claiming that this would not impair his ability to be a judge in city court. Christ's justice does not come from a source like that. He was never fairly convicted of any wrong.
In generosity and concern for others, Christ is also the perfect example. He only lived for the good of others. What the prodigal son's father said to the disgruntled elder brother at the end of Jesus' parable is what the Lord says to us, "All that is mine is yours." No one can be more generous than that. We are in debt to God through Christ his Son for every breath that we draw, every beat of our hearts, every ounce of our strength, every dollar in our wallets, every skill that we have, and every good thought in our minds. All of them and much, much more are the gracious gifts of a bountiful God. Truly, he has "a bountiful eye." So, in putting together a life that pleases God and that can produce the greatest happiness, we have Christ for our model. God's sheet of directions for life gives illustrations for every step of the way, and all those illustrations come together in the life of Christ. If you want to "get it all together," read the directions in God's Word, assemble the parts of Christian character, and copy the model in Jesus Christ.
Use Resources Beyond Yourself
But now, there is a last step. In assembling a very complicated product, it is likely that one may have to draw upon resources beyond one's self. Shaping a human life in the image of God is the most complicated task of all. We'll never do it on our own. At this point we are going beyond the first lesson for today in Proverbs, but today's three Scripture lessons hang together. They form one piece. The lesson in Proverbs was never meant to stand alone on its own two feet and be sufficient in itself as good news. It bears a vital relationship to the other two lessons. For example, the Scripture from James points out, "Whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it." Everyone fails in at least one point to keep all God's commandments; there is no perfect person. Therefore, everyone is guilty of failing in the whole business. In putting our lives together, we fall short of what God requests. We have made a mess of it. Because this failure incurs divine judgment, we have become an endangered species. More than that, we are spiritually doomed.
Here is where the Gospel enters. Resources beyond ourselves are offered by God. Divine judgment upon our failures and upon our pride in our own capabilities in such a serious business is lifted for those who repent and trust in Christ because Christ satisfied that judgment when he died on the cross for us. His death spared us from our deaths, spiritually and eternally. His resurrection raises us to renewal of life here and now, as well as to the assurance of everlasting life with Christ in glory. As the famous artist Turner asked to be lashed to the mast of a ship and taken sailing through the most ferocious storms so that he could be precisely in the middle of the gale and thunder, so God's Son consented to be nailed to the cross so that in the very midst of the thunder and shrieking of divine judgment that was ours he might let us escape it as he died in our place. In our deep crisis of the human condition, we needed resources beyond ourselves.
In Greenwood, South Carolina, soon after a physical education teacher sat down to lunch in an elementary school cafeteria, a gunman burst into the cafeteria and opened fire with a .22 caliber revolver on some 100 students and teachers. This particular teacher, Kat Finkbeiner, threw her body over a girl to shield her. The gunman then entered a third-grade classroom. Finkbeiner followed and found him holding the revolver to the neck of an eight-year-old boy. She spoke to the man, and he pulled the gun away, but then he fired at her. The bullet struck her in the mouth and shattered her jaw. She survived and eventually received a Carnegie medal for heroism.
Marvelous as her sacrifice was, it doesn't hold a candle to what our Lord did for us. On Calvary's cross God literally threw his body over us to protect us from certain destruction. He didn't survive then, nor did he get a Carnegie medal for heroism. but he saved our lives. Later, by God's miracle, he did survive in his resurrection. Now he lives on high, and we continually pin our medals on him -- medals of praise and adoration and thanks and love. When Jesus asked his disciples in today's Gospel, "But who do you say that I am?" and Peter answered with one of the greatest four-word replies ever spoken, "You are the Christ," he didn't know it at the time, but today we see the whole plan of God's salvation through Christ hidden in those words. In cosmic terms, our hopeless human condition before an all-holy God demanded resources outside ourselves. God provided those resources free of charge in the greatest gift ever given -- his only Son, condemned as a criminal, crucified as a slave, buried as a reject, raised as a Savior and ascended as a Lord, all for us. Nobody can put a life together rightly without the saving grace of the Lord Jesus Christ as its chief resource, appropriated through repentance and faith.
When Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn accepted the Templeton Prize in Religion in 1983, he observed, "Western societies are losing more and more of their religious essence." His solution: "a determined quest for the warm hand of God, which we have so rashly and self-confidently spurned." That father, putting together his boy's birthday present, hurt himself and ended in failure on his own. We could do even worse in the far more important matter of putting together a life, unless -- unless we read the directions in God's holy Word, assemble the parts of Christian character, copy the model of Christ, and use the vast spiritual resources outside ourselves, available from God.
