First Presbyterian Church Rev. Jim Teall
Rev. Jim TeallSalt Lake City, Utah June 20, 2004
June 20, 2004Father's Day / Young Adult Sunday“Either Get Busy Dying or Get Busy Living”
Romans 8:12-17
Happy Father’s Day
May I wish you a Happy Father’s Day? I know that this day can either evoke a sense of joy or a sense of sorrow depending on your particular experiences in the arena of fatherhood. One thing the Gospel of Christ compels us to do is to forgive those who have harmed us in the past, even our fathers, and we are also to forgive ourselves, if as fathers we did not live up to our calling. I wish for those whose experience with fatherhood was less than positive that I could change those hurtful experiences into positive ones, but I can’t, but what I can do is to point you to the God who can heal those wounds and I can point you to the God who longs to be your Heavenly Father.
For me Father’s Day is a joyful experience. I do not have the perfect father, but I am thankful that my father, through his actions and his words, more often than not communicated to me that he loved me. I must mention also that on this day in which we are also celebrating the young adults in our congregation that FPC has some wonderful young dads. I have seen the way these dads interact with their children and it brings joy to my heart. Let us as a church always pray for our dads. Being a father is not easy but with prayer and with guidance from others it sure does make the job so much easier.
A Father’s Advice
Now if there is one thing that all dads have in common is that they like to give advice. The key to being a “good dad” is to give “good advice.” My ol’ man, as I affectionately call him (that’s a compliment in Texas) gave me some good advice. He taught me a penny saved is a penny earned. He told me that how I treat others is how they will treat me and he was right. He taught me the value of a good day’s work and that when working think about how to work smarter not necessarily harder. He also taught me that in life there is no free lunch and that in life you get what you deserve. He also told me that good boys and girls are the ones who go to heaven. He usually pulled that one out when he was trying to get me to mow the 15 inch grass on a hot humid day in Texas. However on these last two points my father was wrong. There is one thing that is free, the grace of God and good boys and girls are not the ones who go to heaven. As a matter of fact it is sinful boys and girls who go to heaven but the boys and girls who go to heaven gain access into heaven not by obeying the advice of their earthly father’s but by accepting the love of their heavenly father.
A Rendezvous with Death or Destiny with Life
A famous Dr. and Pastor in the early part of last century, Dr. Lloyd Jones, once gave his son a word of wisdom when he said, “When we are born and we take our first breath we are then we are that much closer to our last.” The truth of the matter is the death is coming to all of us. We all have an unavoidable date with death. None of us are rich enough, smart enough, or strong enough to avoid our rendezvous with death. This date is not blind date, we all know it is coming, but are we ready to dance with the grim reaper?
In the movie The Shawshank Redemption, Tim Robbins plays Andy, who has been convicted of a crime he did not commit. Wasting away in prison he comes to realize that he has a choice, he can either give into despair and allow his soul to die, or he can hold on to hope and keep his spirit free. He tells his friend in prison played by Morgan Friedman, “You either get busy living or you get busy dying.” Andy escaped from his prison and he found the life he was always meant to live.
Which Life are You Living?
The best advice a father can tell his son or daughter is “get busy living.” The question today is; are you busy dying or are you busy actually living? The way to really live life with gusto can only be lived in Christ. Without Christ the only life we can lead is the life that leads to both physical and spiritual death. However, a life in Christ, though we will still die a physical death, can only result in a Spiritual life, and not just life after death but life right here, right now. Theroux has a famous quote: “Most men live lives of quiet desperation.” Sadly, I think Theroux was right and even sadder is that many of those men and women are sitting among us. The church of Jesus Christ is made up of people who profess Christ as their Lord and Savior. The church has been given the Holy Spirit, so then why is that so many in the church go through life being about the business living lives that only lead to death as opposed to living lives that are all about life. How is it with your soul? Do you feel that life is a struggle to be endured or an adventure to be lived?
Taking Steps toward Life by Mortification
The first step in making life an adventure to be lived is to receive Christ. If you are unsure what this means that is ok, but take the time to talk with me after the service, I would love to talk to you one on one more about this. The second step then is to put to death the sinful nature. Jesus tells us in Mark 8 that if we are to follow him that we must deny ourselves and pick up our cross. The cross was the cruelest form of execution ever known to humankind. The Roman execution of crucifixion was the most horrific and painful way to die. Roman soldiers would make the condemned man carry his heavy cross to his place of death. The condemned man would have to carry his own means of death before being nailed to its cross beams. When Jesus said that we his followers that we are to carry our own cross, he meant that we too must be put to death.
When Christ was crucified on his cross, what really happened? Who or what really died on that cross? Jesus died, yes, but not forever for he rose from the dead. So, on his cross, the death of his body was not the ultimate death. What did die on that cross that day was sin, and not his sin, for he never sinned, but what died on that cross was your sin and my sin. Your sin and my sin was put to death in the body of Christ and if we are to follow Christ we to must put to death, not our physical nature but our sinful nature. We are to pick up our sin and carry it to God so he can put our sinful nature to death and thus our spirit will be made alive in Christ.
Theologians call this process of dying to self mortification. Mortification is not masochism. Masochism is hatred of the entire self. Mortification is love of self but hatred of this sin within us. Mortification is also not asceticism. Ascetics hate anything and everything physical or material. Mortification is not hatred of the flesh but of the evil that cause the flesh to sin.
The third step is that we take responsibility for this death of the sinful nature. It is true that the Spirit is the one who will give us the desire to die to our sinful nature, but the Spirit will never posses us nor force us to change. At the heart of God is love and love is not possessive. Love cannot posses, for love to be love it must always leave room for a choice. God so loved the world he chose to send His Son. God was not forced to do it. God will never force us to obey him…never! No the choice to change is up to you and I. Now, you and I cannot change without the power of the Spirit, be we must submit our will to His will, then and only then will we or can we truly walk and live in the Spirit.
Life is Struggle
Many Christians think that unless they are perfect that God can not use them nor love them. This is not true. The mere fact that you are struggling to overcome your sin is a sign that God loves you. The mere fact that you would like to change is a sign that the Spirit of God is working in you. I, like you, wish that God would have taken away all of my sin when I accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior, but he did not. But I know His Spirit is in me because when I sin I feel His loving conviction leading me back to His loving arms and day in and day out I find myself saying, “Father forgive me for I have sinned.” I sin because I am a sinner, but I live because God has made me a saint. All who have the Spirit of God within will always struggle with sin. Instead of being depressed by our sin, we can rejoice that God has put His Spirit in us to convict us of sin. If you struggle with sin, rejoice! The Spirit of God is within you.
Before you knew Christ, before you had the Holy Spirit you were a slave to sin. A slave has no choice. A slave is trapped. It is interesting when we were in our sin, we thought we were free to choose our actions but we were not. We sinned because we were powerless to do anything else. It is only by having the Spirit of God do we find true freedom to choose between good and evil; to choose between love and hate. The follower of Jesus by the Spirit of Jesus now has a choice to love. He is no longer forced to sin. The Apostle Paul tells us that once we have God’s Spirit we are under no obligation to serve our old master of sin, but are now obliged to serve only Christ.
Freedom vs. Fear
When President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation setting the slaves free in America, the majority of slaves knew not what to do with their new freedom so most remained on the plantations with their slave masters. So it is with many of the followers of Jesus. They know not what do with their new freedom in Christ so out of fear or ignorance they continue to serve their old master. We allow sin to continue to be our master by allowing shame wash over us like class five rapid. Shame is a killer. Shame says I am bad, not that an action of mine is bad. Shame says, you will never get it right, you will never change. Shame says you deserve your depression for you are unworthy of love in this world because you are eternally flawed…RUBISH!
Who is in the position to condemn but God and God alone? God has said to you church, “There is now no condemnation for those in Christ.” What does this mean? It means you are free, so go be free and use your freedom to choose love. Christ paid the debt on the cross for our sin and now the only debt we have remaining is our debt to Christ. Christ says if you love me you will obey me. How do we obey Jesus? We obey Jesus by praying, “Lord not my will but thy will.”
Shame, when allowed to rule our life. is shrouded in fear. Fear is a killer. What is fear? Well it sounds like this. “What will others think of me if they really knew my struggles? God must not love me. I don’t deserve love for I am so bad.” Do you know the sound of fear?
Fear and shame are twins born of the evil one. Shame and fear are cowards and when put next to God they run away like a beaten dogs. Paul tells us in the passage that the Spirit of God knows no fear, only its antithesis, freedom. Thus you know the Spirit of God is at work in your life when you stop concerning yourself with what others think of you and you find your self praising God for how he thinks of you.
Living is Knowing Abba
You know you have the Spirit when you pray and you pray Abba, Father; Daddy. The Spirit tells you in the deepest core of your being that God is not some unknown Big Guy in the Sky but a real and personal God that is your Papa. Your loving Father in Heaven when you trusted Him adopted you into his family and you became His child. Adoption was not a Jewish custom. However in Hellenistic society, adoption was common practice but very different than the way we practice adoption today. In Ancient Hellenisitc culture a father would adopt a child not out of pity but because he wanted this adopted child to carry on his name and be heir to his estate. Adoption was a privilege, not an act of charity or desperation. Parents did not adopt because they could not father a child but because they chose a child to bear their namesake.
Abba was an endearing term in Aramaic. It was never used in any prayers found in the Jewish religion of Jesus’ day. From what we can tell, Jesus was the first Jew ever to release from his lips the term Abba to call upon Almighty God. How strange it must have sounded to his listeners? “You are calling the Almighty God papa?” Yes, for the Spirit of God was upon Jesus and because the Spirit was upon Him Jesus could call God nothing else. Because when one is full of the Spirit they come to know the love of God and God is then known not as a being to fear but a daddy to embrace.
Time to Get Busy
As the church of Jesus Christ it is time to get busy my friends; to get busy living by putting to death the sinful nature with in us. Sin is God’s great enemy. Sin abducts but the Spirit adopts. So let us submit our wills to God and be led by His Spirit.
As the church of Jesus Christ it is time to get busy living by walking away from our old master sin and run into the loving arms of God because the Spirit has made us children of God. So let us pray to our Papa in Heaven. What kind of Dad when his child asks for a piece of bread gives his son or daughter a poisonous snake? So if the dads on earth know how to give good gifts to their children how much more will our Papa in Heaven give us good gifts when we ask.
As the Church of Jesus Christ it is time to get busy living by letting go of our false idols of possessions, power, and prestige for these little gods will only lead to death, the death of our souls and turn to the one true God and trust Him with our lives for He is not the God of the dead but the God of the living. Trusting God is the only way to have life and life abundantly. Trusting God is the way to life, now and eternal. Good boys and girls do not go to heaven, but boys and girls who trust God to save them have a mansion prepared for them.
As the Church of Jesus Christ it is time to get busy living, by not giving into shame and fear but by laying them at the cross of Christ for him to put to death and allow God to replace them with love and freedom. God has not given a spirit of fear but of freedom, and freedom is not found in a dictatorship nor is it found in a democracy, it is found only in Deity.
One Last Piece of Advice
On this Father’s day, though I am not a father yet, may I offer a word of advice? There are two roads you can choose in this life. One road leads to death and the other to life. The road to death is wide and many travel it, but the road to life is narrow and only few dare to walk its path. Choose Christ, Choose Love and you will find life.
