Howard C. Wilkinson - "That Period between Birth and Death" (July 8, 1962)
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| (air whooshing) | 0:00 | |
| - | The text of sermon today | 0:17 |
| is found in John's gospel chapter 10 verse 10, | 0:18 | |
| the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, | 0:24 | |
| "I am come that you might have life | 0:27 | |
| and that you might have it more abundantly." | 0:31 | |
| This is not the text which was originally selected | 0:35 | |
| for the sermon this morning and I am not the preacher | 0:38 | |
| who was originally selected to deliver the sermon today. | 0:41 | |
| It is on an occasion such as this, | 0:46 | |
| that we see the value of announcing next Sunday's preacher | 0:48 | |
| in the way we always do. | 0:52 | |
| We do not print in the bulletin, | 0:55 | |
| The Reverend Dr. Jones will preach next Sunday. | 0:57 | |
| We print in there, the Reverend Dr. Jones | 1:02 | |
| in the present tense is scheduled | 1:04 | |
| to deliver the sermon next Sunday. | 1:06 | |
| And last Sunday, it was true when we said that Bishop Fraser | 1:09 | |
| was scheduled to deliver the sermon today, | 1:14 | |
| but we are reminded of the truth | 1:17 | |
| and the scriptural injunction, | 1:19 | |
| "Boast not thyself of tomorrow." | 1:20 | |
| When sometimes the very severe cold | 1:24 | |
| developing the day before a man is scheduled to preach | 1:27 | |
| and getting worse during the evening, | 1:31 | |
| makes it impossible for him to deliver the sermon | 1:33 | |
| which he had so carefully prepared | 1:36 | |
| and to which he had looked forward | 1:38 | |
| in the days of preparation. | 1:40 | |
| This morning, Mrs. Fraser called me | 1:43 | |
| and said that the Bishop who, as I already knew, | 1:45 | |
| had been on a very heavy schedule, had exhausted himself, | 1:48 | |
| and yesterday caught a cold | 1:52 | |
| and it became worse during the night | 1:54 | |
| so that he had an extremely bad cough this morning | 1:57 | |
| and she felt that he really could not deliver the sermon. | 2:00 | |
| We regret this very much of course, | 2:04 | |
| and we shall look forward to an occasion when Bishop Fraser | 2:07 | |
| will come and preach for us here in the chapel. | 2:11 | |
| The only thing which this presents to me | 2:16 | |
| in the form of a problem is a matter of self identity. | 2:20 | |
| I know that it is clear from the dictionary, | 2:25 | |
| what the function of a Bishop coadjutor is, | 2:29 | |
| he is supposed to fill in if the bishop becomes the ill | 2:34 | |
| in addition to the other very important duties, | 2:39 | |
| which the Bishop coadjutor has, | 2:41 | |
| but what the dictionary does not make clear | 2:44 | |
| is the identity of the man who coadjutes the coadjutor. | 2:47 | |
| And in case someone is thinking that the verb coadjute | 2:54 | |
| is properly used, let me hasten to assure you | 2:58 | |
| that the dictionary indicates | 3:02 | |
| that the word in the form of a verb coadjute | 3:05 | |
| is both used correctly and rarely. | 3:09 | |
| I am sure that one reason in North Carolina, | 3:13 | |
| at least why it is used rarely is that Bishop Fraser, | 3:16 | |
| who is a strong and vigorous churchman | 3:19 | |
| almost never needs someone to substitute for him. | 3:22 | |
| You do not have to live as long as Methuselah | 3:28 | |
| to find the experience which Bishop Fraser has had | 3:31 | |
| as an experience of your own when some unexpected illness | 3:35 | |
| prevent you from doing something | 3:39 | |
| which you very much wanted to do. | 3:40 | |
| Speaking of Methuselah, I am reminded of a statement | 3:43 | |
| I heard President Eddy of Chatham College | 3:45 | |
| make about two weeks ago in an address. | 3:49 | |
| And he said that, "Faculty members | 3:52 | |
| who have not had any new ideas lately, | 3:55 | |
| but who claimed tenaciously to their academic tenure | 3:57 | |
| should remember Methuselah." | 4:01 | |
| He said, he thought that if a person | 4:04 | |
| would recall Methuselah, he would not want to be remembered | 4:07 | |
| in the same way Methuselah is remembered, | 4:11 | |
| namely only for the length of time that he was around, | 4:15 | |
| that we should seek to be remembered | 4:21 | |
| by something better than that. | 4:22 | |
| Mr. Jones was connected with Old Siwash | 4:27 | |
| for the space of 40 years. | 4:29 | |
| In case some of you may be wondering | 4:34 | |
| whether we are already often running | 4:36 | |
| in a sermon on Methuselah, | 4:38 | |
| we might very well just be in that situation. | 4:41 | |
| After all, what does a Methodist preacher say | 4:46 | |
| to a church full of frustrated Episcopalians | 4:49 | |
| on an occasion like this, do you preach on? | 4:52 | |
| Rufus Jones, the late great Quaker, | 5:00 | |
| was giving an address here at Duke | 5:05 | |
| during the time that I was a divinity student, | 5:07 | |
| in which he said that, "Methuselah was around so long, | 5:10 | |
| spent so much time on the face of the earth | 5:18 | |
| that the ladies had to wash the dishes | 5:20 | |
| for him a million times." | 5:23 | |
| Now only a person with a mathematical bent to his mind, | 5:25 | |
| such as Dr. Jones would have gone to the trouble | 5:28 | |
| to figure out how many times the ladies | 5:31 | |
| would have to wash the dishes for a man | 5:35 | |
| who lived on the earth 969 years. | 5:36 | |
| There was something however about that statement | 5:40 | |
| that caught my fancy, I thought about it some years later | 5:42 | |
| and wondered if a man who had been here allegedly 969 years | 5:47 | |
| was not important enough so that someone | 5:53 | |
| would have written his biography. | 5:55 | |
| I found that it had been written. | 5:58 | |
| I was so impressed when I read the biography of Methuselah | 6:01 | |
| that I decided to commit it to memory. | 6:04 | |
| And I did memorize the entire biography of Methuselah | 6:07 | |
| and I'm going to recite it to you here this morning | 6:11 | |
| from start to finish every word of it. | 6:15 | |
| However, I should reassure you | 6:18 | |
| before I commence that it is a very brief biography, | 6:20 | |
| but that in no way detracts from the value of it | 6:24 | |
| or the insights we would gain | 6:27 | |
| from this brief biography of Methuselah, | 6:29 | |
| because very often brief biographies are more revealing | 6:31 | |
| about the life and experiences of the man | 6:35 | |
| than a more lengthy biography would be. | 6:39 | |
| For example, Benjamin Franklin's biography | 6:42 | |
| that was given by the little boy who had in his class, | 6:44 | |
| been given the assignment | 6:48 | |
| of bringing in a one sentence biography | 6:49 | |
| of some famous American is illustrative of this point. | 6:51 | |
| After some research in the school library, | 6:58 | |
| he wrote this one sentence biography of Benjamin Franklin. | 7:00 | |
| He said, "Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston, | 7:04 | |
| moved to Philadelphia, he met a girl on the street, | 7:07 | |
| she laughed at him, he married her | 7:10 | |
| and discovered electricity." | 7:12 | |
| (congregation laughing) | 7:14 | |
| It is my opinion that this brief biography | 7:17 | |
| may have been more revealing of the life of Franklin | 7:19 | |
| than some of the longer ones that have been given. | 7:22 | |
| And so it is with the biography of Methuselah, | 7:26 | |
| brief though it is, found in chapter five | 7:29 | |
| of the book of Genesis. | 7:31 | |
| It is indeed an interesting and insightful biography. | 7:33 | |
| Here it is. | 7:40 | |
| "Methuselah lived 187 years and became the father of Lamech. | 7:41 | |
| After the birth of Lamech, he lived 782 years | 7:50 | |
| and became the father to other sons and daughters. | 7:57 | |
| Thus altogether, Methuselah live 969 years," period. | 8:02 | |
| That's all it is. | 8:17 | |
| This is the complete biography of the man who of all men, | 8:20 | |
| who walked the face of this earth, | 8:25 | |
| spent the most time doing it. | 8:26 | |
| There is the complete memoirs of Methuselah. | 8:31 | |
| Now brief though that biography is, | 8:36 | |
| when you try to boil it down | 8:39 | |
| to what is really significant about it and what is unusual, | 8:40 | |
| you can omit even some of what is there | 8:43 | |
| and not lose anything that is unusual. | 8:46 | |
| For example, there's not any particular point | 8:50 | |
| in mentioning how old he was | 8:52 | |
| when his first one was born, you can omit that, | 8:55 | |
| you can omit also the fact that he left some children | 9:01 | |
| to be his heirs in spite of the fact that, as I'm finding, | 9:04 | |
| heir-raising can be a hair-raising experience. | 9:08 | |
| There isn't anything unusual about it. | 9:11 | |
| So the only unusual thing that is left to say | 9:14 | |
| in the life story of this man is that he was here 969 years. | 9:19 | |
| Now this biography becomes all the more interesting | 9:27 | |
| and all the more significant | 9:31 | |
| when you remember where it is found, | 9:33 | |
| it is found in the Book of Life, the Book of Life. | 9:36 | |
| Now if mere existence has anything to do with life, | 9:43 | |
| Methuselah should have been number one in the Book of Life, | 9:49 | |
| but he is not. | 9:53 | |
| For example, the Book of Life | 9:57 | |
| gives the apostle Paul 3000 verses. | 10:01 | |
| It gives Methuselah three verses. | 10:06 | |
| And Methuselah, according to the record, | 10:10 | |
| existed 15 times as long as the apostle Paul. | 10:12 | |
| Well, how do you account for that? | 10:18 | |
| Was the Bible of prejudice against Methuselah? | 10:20 | |
| Was he some kind of atheist? | 10:24 | |
| Was he a low character? | 10:27 | |
| No, not so far as we can tell. | 10:29 | |
| According to the record, he was not a bank robber, | 10:33 | |
| he was not an adulterer, he didn't drink liquor, | 10:37 | |
| he didn't use profanity, he did not make an illegal profit | 10:40 | |
| on fertilizer tanks, | 10:45 | |
| he was not a member of the John Birch Society, | 10:47 | |
| as far as we can tell Methuselah | 10:50 | |
| was a fairly decent sort of person. | 10:52 | |
| The Bible didn't have very much good to say for him, | 10:56 | |
| didn't have anything bad to say against him. | 10:59 | |
| We might even have written his biography in shorter space | 11:02 | |
| than the space given him in the Bible | 11:07 | |
| and have described it in the terms of baseball, | 11:11 | |
| no hints, no runs, no errors, that was Methuselah. | 11:13 | |
| Well, now we are up against a problem. | 11:20 | |
| If we find that in the Book of Life, | 11:23 | |
| a person who apparently had more of it quantitatively | 11:25 | |
| than anyone else is almost brushed off. | 11:29 | |
| What is life? | 11:32 | |
| Of course, in an academic community, | 11:36 | |
| the sensible thing to do is the same as it is | 11:38 | |
| in a non-academic community. | 11:42 | |
| You want to know what a word means, | 11:44 | |
| you consult the dictionary. | 11:46 | |
| What is life? | 11:48 | |
| But I began by looking in the on bridge dictionary, | 11:50 | |
| I found there were 10 definitions of life. | 11:54 | |
| About half of these words define the term | 11:58 | |
| in terms of itself, life is life. | 12:03 | |
| There it is. | 12:08 | |
| The other half of the definitions | 12:10 | |
| referred me to other words, which in turn referred me back | 12:12 | |
| to the word with which I began. | 12:15 | |
| I found this a rather frustrating experience, | 12:19 | |
| and I decided to try a vest-pocket dictionary. | 12:21 | |
| And the more I thought about it, | 12:25 | |
| the more interesting this process became | 12:26 | |
| because of the fact (congregation laughing) | 12:29 | |
| that the average man uses the a vest-pocket dictionary, | 12:30 | |
| and I was very much interested to know what the dictionary | 12:33 | |
| is saying to the average man about life. | 12:36 | |
| I obtained a vest-pocket dictionary, turn to the word life, | 12:41 | |
| and so help me. | 12:46 | |
| This is what it said, life, | 12:48 | |
| that period of time between birth and death, | 12:52 | |
| life, that period of time between birth and death. | 13:01 | |
| This is what the dictionary tells the average person | 13:09 | |
| about life and the terrible thing about it | 13:12 | |
| is that the average person accepts this | 13:14 | |
| as an adequate definition of life. | 13:17 | |
| That when you have your name | 13:20 | |
| listed on the roster of those who have been born | 13:22 | |
| into this world and who subsequently have died out of it, | 13:24 | |
| that you've lived. | 13:26 | |
| That when you have spent 60 or 70 years eating and sleeping, | 13:29 | |
| passing or flunking examinations, paying your taxes, | 13:34 | |
| being married, having children, that you've lived, | 13:37 | |
| that this is life. | 13:41 | |
| Well, I do not know what you think about it, | 13:45 | |
| but I believe that the average person | 13:48 | |
| who follows this definition of life | 13:50 | |
| and uses it as his understanding of what life is, | 13:53 | |
| finally comes to agree with Macbeth, | 13:56 | |
| that "It is a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury, | 13:59 | |
| signifying nothing." | 14:03 | |
| So then, let's turn back to the Book of Life | 14:09 | |
| and see what it has to say about life. | 14:15 | |
| Now I should caution you that at this point | 14:20 | |
| as well as at many other points, | 14:22 | |
| you will not find in the Bible | 14:24 | |
| specific dictionary definitions | 14:26 | |
| of the greatest realities and values. | 14:28 | |
| You do not find for example, | 14:31 | |
| a dictionary type definition of God or of Christ | 14:33 | |
| or of the church or of the Bible or of life. | 14:38 | |
| What we do find in the Book of Life is windows that are open | 14:42 | |
| through which light shines on any subject. | 14:46 | |
| But when we look at the use | 14:52 | |
| of the word life in the New Testament, | 14:54 | |
| we find that it is used approximately 130 times | 14:57 | |
| in the New Testament and all of these 130 instances | 15:01 | |
| in which the word life appears in the New Testament, | 15:07 | |
| more than half of those refer to something | 15:11 | |
| that is not mentioned anywhere | 15:15 | |
| in the biography of Methuselah. | 15:17 | |
| That is to say the word life is used about 80 times | 15:21 | |
| in the New Testament. | 15:25 | |
| When it does not even refer at all | 15:27 | |
| to a mere period of time between birth and death, | 15:30 | |
| it refers to a quality of existence | 15:35 | |
| rather than to a quantity of existence. | 15:39 | |
| As a matter of fact, | 15:43 | |
| we find as we look at the teachings of Jesus Christ, | 15:44 | |
| that there is no value, whatever, none, | 15:47 | |
| absolutely none in mere earthly existence as such, | 15:50 | |
| Jesus said concerning one man, | 15:57 | |
| "It would have been better had he never been born." | 16:00 | |
| He saw completely missed life. | 16:03 | |
| Now it is possible for a person | 16:08 | |
| to be in the presence of great art without ever seeing it. | 16:13 | |
| It is possible for a person to be in the presence | 16:19 | |
| of great music without really hearing it. | 16:22 | |
| It is possible for a person to be in the presence of life | 16:28 | |
| without living it. | 16:34 | |
| And therefore, I believe it is extremely important | 16:37 | |
| that we ask ourselves and be very sure of the answer, | 16:41 | |
| what is it? | 16:46 | |
| Which our Lord Jesus Christ had in mind when he said, | 16:48 | |
| "I am come that you might have life | 16:53 | |
| and that you might have it more abundantly." | 16:57 | |
| He was not talking about earthly existence, | 17:02 | |
| because if that were what he was talking about, | 17:05 | |
| he came to the wrong place when he came to this earth, | 17:07 | |
| we already had that before he came. | 17:11 | |
| He said, "I have come that you might have," | 17:13 | |
| this assumes we didn't already have what he came to give. | 17:16 | |
| Methuselah had more of it than anyone | 17:20 | |
| apparently who has lived since the time of Christ, | 17:22 | |
| if it's simply a be earthly existence, | 17:26 | |
| what was it that Jesus said he came to give | 17:30 | |
| and to give in abundance? | 17:34 | |
| I would like to use a parable in answering that question. | 17:39 | |
| A parable similar to the parable which Dean Clellan | 17:44 | |
| used two weeks ago in his sermon | 17:47 | |
| on the way at the River Kwai. | 17:49 | |
| He was speaking of the way that was followed | 17:54 | |
| by those who were building a bridge across a river. | 17:57 | |
| Today, I would like for the river itself to be the parable, | 18:02 | |
| it could be the River Kwai, it could be any other river. | 18:09 | |
| You've often heard it said that life is like a river, | 18:12 | |
| but have you ever asked yourself, | 18:14 | |
| what is it about a river that is like life? | 18:17 | |
| In my opinion, there are three things about the river, | 18:23 | |
| which illustrate Jesus' teaching concerning life. | 18:27 | |
| Now I did not select the number three | 18:33 | |
| because this is a sermon, but so far as I can tell, | 18:35 | |
| there are three things and only three things | 18:40 | |
| about the river which illustrate the teaching | 18:42 | |
| which Jesus gave concerning life. | 18:44 | |
| I would like to mention them. | 18:48 | |
| The first is that the river takes all of its water | 18:50 | |
| and channels it going in one direction. | 18:57 | |
| It does not dissipate its water in a scattered attempt | 19:05 | |
| to go in all directions at once. | 19:09 | |
| If it did this, it would be not a river, but a swamp. | 19:12 | |
| It takes all of the water that is given to it | 19:17 | |
| and channels it, goes in one direction. | 19:21 | |
| It does not divide its water even | 19:26 | |
| and send half uphill and half downhill, | 19:28 | |
| it sends all of its water in one direction. | 19:32 | |
| Our Lord Jesus Christ said, "No man can serve two masters. | 19:36 | |
| Either he will hate the one and love the other, | 19:42 | |
| or he will cleave to the one and despise the other." | 19:45 | |
| You cannot basically serve two masters and have life. | 19:51 | |
| There are people who attempt to serve two masters, | 19:56 | |
| they do not find life as Jesus came to give it. | 19:59 | |
| The integration of the personality, | 20:06 | |
| the basic drives of mankind, intellectual, emotional, | 20:10 | |
| physical, must be unified and going in one direction. | 20:15 | |
| We find in the book of Proverbs the saying, | 20:22 | |
| "Go to the ant thou sluggard, | 20:25 | |
| consider her ways and be wise." | 20:28 | |
| We might call in a seminar proverb and say, | 20:31 | |
| "Go to the river thou scatterbrain, | 20:34 | |
| consider its ways and be wise, go in one direction." | 20:37 | |
| Now there is a fine line of distinction | 20:44 | |
| between having a one-track mind and going in one direction. | 20:46 | |
| This is no call for us to have one-track mind. | 20:53 | |
| I doubt that there is any person in history | 20:58 | |
| whose interests were more versatile | 21:02 | |
| than those of our Lord Jesus Christ. | 21:04 | |
| And yet history records the life of no person | 21:07 | |
| who was as unified, basically one, | 21:11 | |
| as our Lord Jesus Christ, | 21:15 | |
| "I have come to do my Father's will." | 21:19 | |
| His Apostle Paul said this one thing, I do. | 21:22 | |
| If we're going to find life, | 21:29 | |
| we have to be unified in our whole personality structure, | 21:31 | |
| decide that there is one thing we're going to do | 21:36 | |
| and then do it. | 21:38 | |
| But that by itself is not enough | 21:40 | |
| because that could be very bad and very wrong. | 21:41 | |
| It could be wrong if we went in the improper direction. | 21:45 | |
| Here again, we find an illustration | 21:50 | |
| from the parable of the river, | 21:53 | |
| which gives us insight into Jesus' teaching concerning life. | 21:55 | |
| What direction does the river flow in? | 22:02 | |
| Does it flow in keeping with the laws of the world | 22:05 | |
| in which it finds itself or does it flow against those laws? | 22:10 | |
| Does it cooperate with the way the world is built | 22:17 | |
| or does it defy the structure of the universe? | 22:20 | |
| Well, of course, the answer to that is obvious. | 22:26 | |
| It obeys the law of gravity from the beginning | 22:30 | |
| of its course, until it empties itself into the ocean. | 22:33 | |
| It obeys all of the laws of the universe | 22:37 | |
| in which it finds itself. | 22:40 | |
| If it did not, it would cease to be a river, | 22:44 | |
| but it does cooperate with the way the world is built, | 22:49 | |
| it does obey the laws of the universe and it is a river. | 22:53 | |
| At this point, I think we stand able and ready | 22:59 | |
| to see one of the most profound aspects of the whole gospel, | 23:03 | |
| which is that our Lord Jesus Christ | 23:09 | |
| did not come to this world so much to coax you and me | 23:12 | |
| into doing what he wants us to do | 23:18 | |
| as he came to declare to us the way things are. | 23:22 | |
| Then if you want life, live it that way, | 23:31 | |
| if you don't, you can live against that. | 23:35 | |
| "Whatsoever a man soweth, | 23:39 | |
| that ought he to reap," said Jesus? | 23:43 | |
| No, he simply said, "Whatsoever a man soweth, | 23:47 | |
| that shall he reap." | 23:53 | |
| That's the way the world is built. | 23:57 | |
| If you want life, cooperate with that, | 23:59 | |
| if you do not cooperate with it, you will miss life. | 24:03 | |
| Our Mathematics Department here at Duke University | 24:07 | |
| does not teach students that it would be a fine thing | 24:11 | |
| if two and two should someday equal four or in so far, | 24:14 | |
| as you have influence in your lives, | 24:19 | |
| dear students from now on | 24:22 | |
| try to make two and two equal four. | 24:23 | |
| This is not the teaching of our Mathematics Department. | 24:27 | |
| They teach that whether we like it or not, | 24:32 | |
| whether this is the way we would have done it | 24:35 | |
| had we been designing mathematics, two and two are four, | 24:38 | |
| they always have been, they are now, they always will be. | 24:43 | |
| And if you want your paper to come out | 24:47 | |
| right on the examination, | 24:49 | |
| and if you want your business affairs to be right | 24:50 | |
| when you do them in the future, | 24:53 | |
| you'd better be adjust yourself | 24:54 | |
| to the fact that two and two are four. | 24:58 | |
| The way of the transgressor is hard, | 25:03 | |
| brotherhood is a law of life. | 25:10 | |
| It is not some fine ideal | 25:12 | |
| that Jesus would like for us to practice, | 25:16 | |
| but there is in this world a law of brotherhood, | 25:18 | |
| we can cooperate with it and have life | 25:22 | |
| or we can seek to break it and be broken. | 25:24 | |
| Honesty is not something | 25:28 | |
| that Jesus would like for us to practice merely, | 25:30 | |
| honesty is a law of life. | 25:34 | |
| If you are honest, you can find life. | 25:36 | |
| If you are dishonest, you are certain to miss it. | 25:38 | |
| Truth, justice, all of these great principles of the gospel | 25:42 | |
| are laws of the universe which we can either cooperate with | 25:46 | |
| and find life, which we can ignore and be destroyed. | 25:50 | |
| Third, the river illustrates | 25:57 | |
| another teaching of Christ concerning life. | 26:01 | |
| The river does not hold the water selfishly, | 26:06 | |
| which is given onto it, but it passes it on, | 26:09 | |
| it gives it away. | 26:13 | |
| This is one of the teachings of Christ | 26:16 | |
| that is central to our whole understanding of life. | 26:18 | |
| We are to be like the river in that regard, | 26:23 | |
| we are to give, to sacrifice, | 26:26 | |
| we are to live in dedication for the glory of God and others | 26:31 | |
| rather than for our own glory and our own selfish advantage. | 26:36 | |
| Jesus said when he commissioned 70 and sent them out, | 26:41 | |
| "Freely you have received, freely give, | 26:44 | |
| give to him that asketh of thee, | 26:49 | |
| and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away." | 26:51 | |
| This is the teaching of our Lord. | 26:58 | |
| Well, but you say, what does this have to do with life? | 27:01 | |
| Sure, he said to do that, | 27:03 | |
| but what does that have to do with life? | 27:05 | |
| Our Lord Jesus Christ explained that there are some people | 27:09 | |
| who seek to save their lives, | 27:14 | |
| but they don't save them by seeking to save them. | 27:17 | |
| And there are other people | 27:21 | |
| who with selfless abandon give themselves | 27:22 | |
| for the glory of God and the good of others | 27:27 | |
| and rather surprisingly, find that they have saved | 27:29 | |
| and found their own abundant life. | 27:34 | |
| This is the teaching of our Lord about life. | 27:40 | |
| Paradoxically, if you wanna have life, | 27:44 | |
| don't be too much concerned about it, | 27:47 | |
| be concerned about the lives of others, | 27:49 | |
| and you will find gloriously and abundantly | 27:52 | |
| that it comes back to you. | 27:55 | |
| In the university service of worship | 27:59 | |
| in the Duke Chapel every Sunday, | 28:01 | |
| we receive an offering of money. | 28:03 | |
| If you have thought about it, which I hope you have, | 28:07 | |
| did it seem to you that this offering was being received | 28:10 | |
| in order that we might conduct these services here, | 28:13 | |
| pay for the lights and the heat, | 28:17 | |
| well, not the heat right now, but in the wintertime, | 28:21 | |
| the janitor service, the preachers and so on? | 28:25 | |
| If you thought that you were mistaken | 28:28 | |
| because not a penny of the chapel offering | 28:30 | |
| goes to maintain the chapel service. | 28:34 | |
| This is done by the university | 28:36 | |
| because it believes in the Christian religion | 28:38 | |
| and wishes to have a Christian service | 28:41 | |
| of worship on the campus. | 28:43 | |
| We have an offering of money in this service | 28:46 | |
| because you and I have a need to give. | 28:48 | |
| And all of this money is put | 28:54 | |
| in a benevolent budget under the administration | 28:55 | |
| of the Duke University Religious Council | 28:58 | |
| and it goes for others. | 29:00 | |
| The reason we do this is there is no true spiritual life | 29:04 | |
| without giving. | 29:08 | |
| There cannot be. | 29:11 | |
| Our need to give is prior to God's need to receive. | 29:13 | |
| He said back in the Old Testament days, | 29:18 | |
| when the people thought they were doing God a favor | 29:20 | |
| by killing their cattle and putting them up on the altar, | 29:22 | |
| "Do I need your sacrifices, | 29:26 | |
| the cattle on a thousand hills are mine? | 29:29 | |
| If I were hungry, I wouldn't have to have you | 29:33 | |
| kill one of yours for me to eat." | 29:35 | |
| God taught us stewardship first by asking the human race | 29:40 | |
| to kill its best and put it on the altar and burn it. | 29:45 | |
| It was not for missions, it was not for orphans, | 29:49 | |
| God didn't need it, we had a need to give that was prior | 29:52 | |
| and primary to God's need to receive. | 29:57 | |
| And then after we learned that, | 29:59 | |
| he taught us the finer realities of Christian stewardship. | 30:02 | |
| Like the river, we have life only when we give, | 30:08 | |
| when we pass on, when we sacrifice. | 30:12 | |
| And when we cease to do what the river does, | 30:15 | |
| we become like the dead sea, which receives only, | 30:19 | |
| and does not give, we become dead. | 30:22 | |
| Well, Jesus Christ came to this world | 30:27 | |
| to give us something we did not already have. | 30:32 | |
| We had a period of time between birth and death, | 30:35 | |
| Methuselah had 969 years of it, but this is not life. | 30:38 | |
| Jesus Christ came to teach us to live unified lives, | 30:44 | |
| going in one direction. | 30:50 | |
| The direction indicated by the laws | 30:53 | |
| of his spiritual universe and to seek the good of God | 30:55 | |
| and the welfare of God's children first, | 31:01 | |
| assured that our own needs would be fully cared for | 31:06 | |
| in such a life of giving. | 31:10 | |
| (air whooshing) | 31:15 | |
| Oh God, our Heavenly Father who has loved us into life | 31:20 | |
| and who doesn't love us throughout life, | 31:24 | |
| we offer onto the now our hearts praying that each of us | 31:28 | |
| may be born again into that new life of the spirit, | 31:33 | |
| which Jesus Christ has come to give to everyone. | 31:37 | |
| And now may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, | 31:42 | |
| the love of God the Father and the communion | 31:46 | |
| and fellowship of the Holy Spirit, | 31:48 | |
| rest upon you and abide with you now and evermore. | 31:51 | |
| ♪ Amen, amen ♪ | 31:59 |
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