Sermon Transcript — March 17, 2007
I want to start off with a story here. A police officer pulled over a speeding car. The officer said, "I clocked you at eighty miles per hour in a fifty-five mile an hour zone, sir."
The driver said, "Officer, I was on cruise control. It was just sixty. Maybe you should recalibrate your instruments." That's a nice thing to tell an officer, by the way.
Without looking up from her knitting, his wife said sweetly, "Now don't be silly, dear. You know that this car doesn't have cruise control."
The officer writes out the ticket, and the driver looks at his wife and growls, "Can't you keep your mouth shut for once?"
The wife smiles and says, "You should be thankful your radar detector went off when it did."
As the officer makes out the second ticket for illegal radar detector, the man glowers at his wife and with clenched teeth he says, "Woman, can't you keep your mouth shut?"
The officer frowns and said, "I notice you're not wearing your seatbelt, sir. That's an automatic seventy-five dollar fine."
The driver says, "Yeah, but you see, sir, I had to take my wallet out of my pocket and I couldn't get to it without undoing my seatbelt."
His wife says, "Now dear, you know very well you never wear your seatbelt."
And as the police officer wrote out the third ticket, the driver turns to his wife and barks, "Why don't you shut up?"
The officer looks over to the woman and said, "Ma'am, does your husband always speak to you in that tone?
And she says, "Oh, no officer, only when he's been drinking."
I don't want to even think about what might have happened later on. Obviously, this man had a few problems - lying, disrespect, drinking and driving. We could probably name a few - anger, he obviously had a few problems, some things he needed to change.
What is it in your life that you would like to change? What is it in your life that you would like to change? Hopefully your life's not like that, gentlemen, but when you think about your life, the habits you have, the attitudes you have, what would you like to change? And what impedes positive change in your life? What is it that holds back change? Change isn't easy. I think we all understand that. There are some things that we struggle many years with. What is that holds back change in our lives?
I've titled the sermon today: "Impediments to Change." Impediments to change, things that slow us up, attitudes, thoughts that we might have that cause us not to change in the way that we really wish we would. What are some of those? What are the things that kind of act as speed bumps in our spiritual life and keep positive change from taking place.
You know, as Christians we recognize I think, we need to grow. If we've been baptized we recognize that we've repented of our sins, we've put ourself on a track that is destined for the kingdom and we're hoping and we're striving to move forward and grow every day, every week of our lives. If you're not baptized I think you still understand that we need that growth, we still need to grow toward the kingdom. The things that impede us, that hold us back.
Today I'd just like to narrow it down to three points, three things that impede us and keep us back from change. The first one I have for you is: Sometimes we make excuses. It's very easy to make excuses that keep us from changing.
Sometimes we make excuses. Have you ever said or heard someone say, "Well, I'm only human. I'm only human. I do bad things. Humans do bad things. I'm only human." And so they tend to focus on the status quo. "I'm only human; I am who I am and the status quo's about all you're going to get right now."
That's just an excuse, isn't it? We hear it a lot. We've probably said it, but it's one of these things that can, it's an attitude that can begin to hold us back; it's a speed bump in our path to spiritual progress.
What about the concept that: "Well, nobody's perfect. We can't be perfect." Oh, that! Have you ever heard that? That's an excuse to not moving forward. Let's go over to Matthew 5 if you will. A familiar scripture to us but I think as we approach the spring holy days it's important to think about this and do some examination of our own attitudes toward change. There's a word, misoneist, I believe. Do you know what a misoneist is? It's someone who fears and hates change. That'd be a tough thing to be in God's church and fear and hate change, wouldn't it? It'd be very difficult.
Matthew 5:48 - It says, "Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect." Now that's a tough thing to do, but yet scripture calls on us to have that as our mission; that we're moving forward, have that as a goal in our life, to become like our Father. He was perfect. Now that word, actually means mature and complete, that we become spiritually mature and complete in our lives. Notice back in verse 43 it says:
Verse 43 - "You have heard (that) it (was) said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.'
Verse 44 - "But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, and do good to those who hate you, (and) pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you." Now that is part of what it takes on that progress toward maturity, toward perfection. Now that's hard, isn't it?
Now we can hold back our anger when someone does something to us; maybe we can hold back our anger. Maybe we're still struggling to not just lash back. We get to the point where we can hold back, then we read a scripture like this and it says, "...pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you." That's a whole different act that's so foreign to the human way of thinking, isn't it? It's so foreign to us and yet that's what God wants us to grow toward, to grow toward a maturity and completeness spiritually.
Mature people have changed greatly. They have changed; they have grown; they've overcome many, many sins and they're still in the process of seeking change. A mature person seeks change in their lives. He continually is asking God, "Show me where I can improve." They're asking their wife who's in the car beside them, "Where can I improve?" Asking others. That's some of the excuses.
Another is, "That's the way I am. That's just the way I am. I'm always angry. I'm always negative. I'm always lacking faith. It's just me. It's the way I was born. It's the way I am. It's the way I've always done things." I have a story here that I found that though it's not accurate in all its details, it generally gives the gist of the truth in what happened. It's called, "The Story of the Rail Width."
"The U.S. Standard Railway gauge (which is the distance between two railways) is four feet, eight and one-half inches. Why such an odd number? Because that's the way they built them in England, and American railroads were built by British expatriates, and also the equipment came from Britain. Why did the English adopt such a peculiar gauge? Because the people who built the pre-railroad tramways used that gauge. They, in turn were locked into that gauge because people who built the tramways used the same standards and tools that had been used for building wagons, which were set at a gauge of four feet, eight and one-half inches.
Why were wagons built to that scale? Because with any other size the wheels didn't match the old wheel ruts on the roads. So who built these old, rutted roads? The first long-distance highways in Europe were built by Imperial Rome for the benefit of their legions. The roads have been used ever since. The ruts were first made by Roman war chariots. Four feet, eight and one-half inches was the width the chariot needed to be to accommodate the rear ends of two war horses."
Hmmm. So, basically we see how things kind of tie together and how railways tend to be the same width because it was before that, and things before that. How easy it is for us to carry on the same ways of doing things, the same habits. We really get into a rut in our life and basically say, "Well, that's just the way I am." That's an excuse, isn't it?
Ken Blanchard, author of "The One Minute Manager" wrote: "The chains of habit are too light to feel until they're too heavy to break." We get into a rut in our lives and "the chains of habit are too light to feel until they're too heavy to break."
Now we can be overtaken by a bad habit before we know it. They say that it takes seven times of repeating something to develop a habit; one study I read. But it takes thirty times of not doing it to unbreak that habit. It's easier to get into a rut; it's easier to begin and start a habit than it is to get out of it, and so we tend to ride in those same ruts very easily. That's an excuse, "It's just the way I am."
What about this excuse? "I tried to change, but it doesn't work." It didn't work, "I tried to change, but it didn't work." That can be discouraging when we pray about something, when we recognize it and we want to, we wish it were different but it just doesn't seem to change. I think it's easy to get into a habit, or get into a way of thinking that, "Well, I'm going to fail if I try and change that because I've tried to change it before."
Remember the old example of the circus elephants, how they train them to stay where they are? They tie a chain to them when they're very small and they try to pull and get away, try to break the chain. They can't do it. They're too small. They just can't overcome the strength of the chain and they learn that they can't break away. They try it many times. When they get older, a lot stronger, a lot more capable of breaking that chain, they can put a little rope on them. They already know they can't tug and break it away, so they don't try. And they can tie up an elephant with just a very little thing.
Sometimes sins can be like ball and chain. We learn to live with it because we've occasionally tried to break away but it didn't work and we begin to have that attitude, "I've changed but it just didn't work."
Well, we could ask ourselves, especially at this time of year, "How much elephant effort have we really put into it?" I'm sure that praying about a problem is very important, very important, but is that all there is in our spiritual arsenal? Is that all the strength and muscle we can put behind it? Oh, no - there's a whole lot more. There's very practical things we can do in our lives. Stay away from temptation; fasting, doing a study on the issue, developing some the things I'm going to talk about a little more here in a little while, but there's a lot of spiritual strength that can be put into changing. So it's important to ask ourselves, "Do we have the little elephant mentality?" Or are we really putting everything that's in our spiritual arsenal to deal with it? Well, these are all excuses. They help us be content with the status quo. It's an attitude we have to watch out for, making excuses.
The second point I have is: Sometimes we don't see the urgency to change. Sometimes we just don't see the urgency to change and it's important in our lives of overcoming to recognize there is an urgency to it and not put it off. Let's go back to Isaiah 55, if you will. We'll read verse 6 & 7 here. We need a sense of urgency as we seek to overcome and grow.
Isaiah 55:6 says, "Seek the Lord while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near." Is it possible to get to a place in our lives where we don't work on a problem? We put it off and put it off and we find later on it builds, it grows. Other sins become enmeshed with that, and we find that we just feel farther and farther from God. If we put it off that can happen. It says to, "Seek the Lord while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near.
Verse 7 - "Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts..." So, we're to forsake not only what we do that's wrong but the way we think that's not in line with God. It says, " Let him return to the Lord, and He will have mercy (up)on him; and to our God, for He will pardon abundantly." What an encouraging thing! God's forgiveness, I'm sure we'll hear more about that as Passover and Unleavened Bread approaches but the idea is, don't put it off. Call on Him while He is near.
For many of you at "ABC," it's a perfect opportunity; you've been drawn into an environment where you're learning God's way and in a sense God's very near right now in that way, and it's important to ask yourself, "Are you seeing the urgency of that change, becoming the person you want to be?"
I want to read you a story about urgency. "Picture a scene in the old west sometime in the 1870s. Weary cowboys in dusty Levis gather around a blazing campfire after a day on the open range. The lonely howl of a coyote counterpoints the notes of a guitar. The moon floats serenely overhead. Suddenly a billow of pain shatters the night. A cowpoke leaps away from the fire, dancing in agony. Hot rivet syndrome has claimed another victim.
"You see in those days, Levis had been made in those days as they had in the first days of Levi Strauss with copper rivets at stress points to provide extra strength. On those original Levis, model 501, the crotch rivet was the critical one. When cowboys crouched too long beside the campfire the rivet grew uncomfortably hot. For years the brave men of the west suffered from this curious occupational hazard.
"Then in 1933 Walter Haas Sr., the president of Levi Strauss, went camping in his Levi 501's. He crouched by a crackling campfire in the high sierras drinking in the pure mountain air when he fell prey to hot rivet syndrome.
"He consulted the professional wranglers in his party. Had they suffered the same mishap? An impassioned, 'Yes,' was the reply. Haas vowed that the offending rivet must go. At their next meeting of the board of directors they voted it to extinction."
Some people change when they see the light. Other people change when they feel the heat. Which type of person are you? Do we change when we see the light, when we see something in our lives that we recognize. "You know, I really need to change that; I really need to work on that." Or do we put if off because, "You know, it's really not urgent now." We wait until we feel the heat.
The man in the car with the police officer writing him ticket after ticket was beginning to feel some heat. Had he worked on some of those problems before he might have saved himself a little bit. Are we the kind of person who change when we see the light, or do we change when we feel the heat?
You know, we could talk about the parable of the ten virgins and the five that weren't prepared. They were putting things off and we see time after time in the BIBLE that God wants us to have the attitude, when we see it we work on it. When we work on it we work on it to fix it to move forward and change. That's one of the things that we really need to ask ourselves. "How urgently do we see the need to change?"
Point number three - Sometimes we just don't have a real desire to change. Sometimes we don't have a real desire, and desire there is the key because it's very easy to wish we were different, to wish we were different, to kinda, sorta hope we can change. Kinda, sorta like the problem. Kinda, sorta like being in that rut. It's safe and secure, it's easy. How much do we really desire?
Vladimir Horowitz, a classical pianist was once told by a person who had heard his concert. "I would do anything to play like you."
He looked at them and surprised them by saying, "No you wouldn't, because if you did you would."
"I would do anything." No, they just wish they could. It was wishful thinking. A couple of things that we have to look at if we want to really desire to change. We must first of all despise sin. Oftentimes it's easy to see things in our life that we "kind of" would like to change, wish would change but we don't despise it yet. We don't see it the way God does.
That thing that you thought of when I first asked you what you'd like to change, how much do you despise it? How much, or is it just an annoyance? Maybe it's something that you just hope no one else ever finds out about you. Is it something that you desperately want to change because you abhor it and you see how it works and the result that kind of thing has in the world. You've seen the scripture, what God thinks about it and you want your mind to be like His. How much do we despise it?
The other thing, in order to desire it is we must look to the end and see the result if we do change. Look to the end. See the result when we do change. Let's go to Matthew 18. Change brings reward. It's far greater than the pleasures of whatever sin is today, we know that, but how much are we really focused on that reward? Have we really focused on what happens after this life as a result of being willing to struggle to change? You know, we have to despise the sin, and we also have to deeply desire change and seeing the end.
Matthew 18:8 says, "If your hand or foot causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you..." Let's read that again. If your hand or foot causes you to sin, cut it off and ... throw it away. Can you imagine cutting off your arm and tossing it away? Working on a problem with stealing and casting your arm away so you couldn't pick up things? Now, I'm not recommending you do this, but the attitude, think of the attitude. Look how far He's saying you have to be willing to go to change things. It is better for you (it says) to enter into life lame or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet, to be cast into the everlasting fire.
How do we think of that verse in our lives when we think of the things that we want to change. Do we want to change them badly enough that we're willing to do what it takes, to struggle, to endure the pain of change?
Verse 9 - If your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you.... I can't even stand to watch my wife put contacts in, let alone plucking an eye out. "If your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you. It is better for you to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes, (to) be cast into hell fire." The principle there being how far are we willing to go. Are we willing to really struggle, and overcome, and change?
Anybody know the name Aron Ralston? You probably heard of him about three or four years ago. He was twenty-seven at the time, hiking a remote area near the Canyonlands National Park of southeast Utah. He was hiking through a rocky area and a big boulder came crashing down on his arm. He was trapped and the rescuers, there was no way for them to see him where they were searching, and he realized soon that he would die there if he did not break himself free, and he couldn't break himself free. He ended up having to take his pocketknife and cut off his right arm below the elbow.
Now that's just, I can't even imagine thinking what it would be like to do that. He proceeded to cut off his right arm below the elbow, applied a tourniquet, administered first aid, rigged some anchors, and rappelled sixty feet to the canyon floor below. He was found by a couple of other hikers and taken, he was able to walk into the hospital and get treatment. But I couldn't help thinking of this scripture when I heard that story. He wanted life, and he wanted life so desperately he was willing to cut his arm off so he could walk out of that cave and find help.
How much do we want life eternal? Are we willing to think about, think in terms of what must I do to overcome and change? What am I willing to do to pursue eternal life, and how far will we go? Let's go to Hebrews 12. Jesus Christ struggled against temptation. He was in all points emptied as we are, yet without sin. In that sense He's been tempted more than we have because we've all given in at least once, probably more. He struggled to the greatest extent, to the greatest extent of the temptation and didn't even give in. What motivated, what drove Him? Obviously His love for us, to be our Saviour, to be our example. Notice in Hebrews 12:2:
Hebrews 12:2 - Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, (and) has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. You see here one thing that motivated Christ. It was the joy that was set before Him.
It's so easy for me to focus on the trials that are set before me, or the struggles or the temptations, but Christ focused on the joy that was before Him. Where He was going, what would happen if He endures, if He remains sinless, if He can carry this through He will be the Saviour of humanity. He will sit again at the right hand of God in glory and all eternity.
If it was good enough for Him to go through all that, I don't know what it's like, but if it was good enough for Him to go through all that, then it must be something. It must be something well beyond our comprehension. The apostles seemed to grasp some of that because they all, except John died as martyrs, it seems. They would not give up the faith.
We look to the future. We despise the sin and look to the future, when we will have our reward and it will be something awesome. It will be something awesome!
You know, it takes less work to live with a problem than to change it. We get comfortable and it's so important that we don't have attitudes that discourage change in our life; attitudes that hold us back, ways of looking at change that are roadblocks or stumbling blocks for us. There are no shortcuts to salvation. We struggle if we overcome. That's a simple fact. We struggle if we overcome and thankfully God is there to help us. Why doesn't He get rid of the struggle? Wouldn't it be a lot easier if we could just decide to change and we were changed? It would be a lot easier if that were the case. Why doesn't He help us more and decrease the struggle?
I read a story once about a man who saw a cocoon; he kept an eye on it every day. One day he saw a little hole in the top of the cocoon and realized that a butterfly was about to come out, would be making its way out. He watched that little butterfly struggle and struggle for hours and hours to get out of that little hole and it just didn't seem to be making any progress. In fact, after a few hours it seemed to just have given up, and he decided this was excruciating for him to watch so he took a little pair of scissors and he snipped the opening a little more so that the butterfly could slip right out of the cocoon. He helped him out. The butterfly had a swollen body and very small wings. He watched the butterfly, thinking it would soon take flight. It didn't take flight. The body was too big, the wings weren't developed.
He later found out that it was the struggle to squeeze through that little hole, that God had intended for the fluid to be pressed out of the body into the wings, making them full, firm, and able to fly. By decreasing the struggle he had caused that butterfly to never be able to fly.
I think sometimes God looks at us, and He sees that struggle is necessary. Yes, change is hard but the struggle is absolutely essential to our spiritual lives. We mustn't be unwilling to struggle. We all go through the same struggle, and God is willing to help us and give us strength to struggle, but He's not going to snip the end of the cocoon because He knows that that's part of our very character. We will value the character more if we had to struggle for it. We will be able to help those who do struggle with sin because we've struggled with sin. There's an important aspect to our growth that involves being willing to struggle, to change.
Well, as Passover approaches, whether we're baptized or not yet baptized, let's ask ourselves these questions: What do we think about change? What's our attitude toward change? Are we making excuses? Are we putting it off? How deeply do we desire change and be like Christ and to be in His kingdom and live forever?
Now the result of change today, even though it is a struggle, it is even in this life a life of joy and happiness and we can be thankful that Christ went before us, died for us and enables us and strengthens us. That's such an encouragement this time of year when we're thinking about change. But let's remember that it is a struggle, but it also brings happiness in this life. It brings a tremendous reward in the life to come.