Long Branch Baptist Church
Halfway, Virginia; est. 1786
Sunday, July 1st, 2007
Enter to Worship
Prelude David Witt
Meditation 1 Cor 15:51 – 57
Invocation Michael Hollinger
*Hymn #553
“Nearer My God to Thee”
Welcome & Announcements
Morning Prayer [See Insert]
*Hymn #807
“My Country Tis’ of Thee”
*Responsive Lesson [See Right]
*Hymn #799
“America the Beautiful”
Offertory Mr. Witt
*Doxology
Praise God from whom all blessings flow / Praise Him all creatures here below
Praise him above, ye heavenly host / Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Amen.
*Scripture John 12:20 – 26
Sermon
“The Supreme Gamble”
Invitation Hymn #596
“I Surrender All”
*Benediction
*Congregational Response
May the grace of Christ our Savior / And the Father’s boundless love
With the Holy Spirit’s favor / Rest upon us from above. Amen.
* Congregation, please stand.
Depart To Serve
RESPONSIVE LESSON
When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed?
The end of those things is death.
But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life.
For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
So, I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.
So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
Isaac said to his father Abraham, “Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?”
Abraham said, “God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.”
We know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again;
Death no longer has dominion over him.
Do you not know, brothers—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives? Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God.
For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death.
But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit.
For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin.
For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God.
I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
Romans 6:20-23; 12:1; 6:11; Gen 22:7-8; Romans 6:9; 7:1;7:4-6; 7:14; Gal 2:19-20
ANNOUNCEMENTS
THAT OTHERS MIGHT SEE JESUS… Please remember to purchase reading glasses for Kazakhstan. You can purchase any strength, any size at local pharmacies (Walgreens is selling two pair for $15 right now) and drop them in the red box at the front of the sanctuary.
WARNING: HOMECOMING MAY BE CLOSER THAN IT APPEARS. Homecoming is only 2 ½ months away. If there is a particular homecoming speaker you would like us to invite, please be talking to your deacons.
PLEASE REMEMBER TO BE PRAYING FOR YOUR DEACONS as we continue to seek God’s will in what is next for Long Branch. Be praying too for the next pastor who will serve this congregation, that he or she will have heart for this church and the gifts to lead it where God would have it go.
PRAYER LIST
Debbie Flickinger, Warren Lee, Debbie Grigsby, Corey Keely, Susan Schulz, Martha Puryear, Cindy & Thomas Lee, Irene Griffith.
Long Branch Church, your deacons, the next pastor.
Our President, our Congress, our Court, our Governor, and other elected representatives. Our police, firemen, teachers, and men and women in Iran and Afghanistan, Our enemies.
For Forgiveness of our own sin, Thankfulness for the blessings given us, for the joy of our salvation.
Zane, Steve, Jeff, and Bruce – for their families as they serve the Lord in Central Asia.
ANNOUNCEMENTS
THAT OTHERS MIGHT SEE JESUS… Please remember to purchase reading glasses for Kazakhstan. You can purchase any strength, any size at local pharmacies (Walgreens is selling two pair for $15 right now) and drop them in the red box at the front of the sanctuary.
WARNING: HOMECOMING MAY BE CLOSER THAN IT APPEARS. Homecoming is only 2 ½ months away. If there is a particular homecoming speaker you would like us to invite, please be talking to your deacons.
PLEASE REMEMBER TO BE PRAYING FOR YOUR DEACONS as we continue to seek God’s will in what is next for Long Branch. Be praying too for the next pastor who will serve this congregation, that he or she will have heart for this church and the gifts to lead it where God would have it go.
PRAYER LIST
Debbie Flickinger, Warren Lee, Debbie Grigsby, Corey Keely, Susan Schulz, Martha Puryear, Cindy & Thomas Lee, Irene Griffith.
Long Branch Church, your deacons, the next pastor.
Our President, our Congress, our Court, our Governor, and other elected representatives. Our police, firemen, teachers, and men and women in Iran and Afghanistan, Our enemies.
For Forgiveness of our own sin, Thankfulness for the blessings given us, for the joy of our salvation.
Zane, Steve, Jeff, and Bruce – for their families as they serve the Lord in Central Asia.
Title: The Supreme Gamble
Text: John 12:20 – 26
MP: You don’t have resurrection until you have death.
Outline:
- Marbury v. Madison
- What must die?
o Power
Corruption of Political power
Poor Jerusalem
o Sin
Paris Hilton’s understanding
Deliver us from our enemies – not our friends
o Righteousness
Abraham & Isaac
Our church
- Susan
Text Outline:
Die, Keep, Follow
Glorify
No one would doubt that the Supreme Court of the United States is a powerful body: Nine men and women who have the power of life and death over any law or any action that our government takes. But it’s a funny thing, you know – because the Supreme Court was never supposed to have any real power at all. If you look at the Constitution, it’s the only branch of government that has no duties assigned to it.
It only became the force in government that it is because it chose to have no power. This July 4th, I’d like take a moment to think about that power that comes from being powerless, because its principle lifted straight from Jesus. In dying, we are born again to eternal life. But we will never have that life until we are willing to die.
In the case of the Supreme Court, it was losing a case that gave it the power it has. Marbury v. Madison established a power in the Court that didn’t exist until the court effectively lost that decision.
You see, in 1801, the Supreme Court was nothing but five justices who would listen to cases that involved D.C. and not much else. In fact, the court was so unimportant that at least one session was simply held in a tavern. They were nothing until two Presidents decided to fight.
Two days before John Adams was supposed to leave office, he decided that he was going to stack the bench. He named as many judges as he could before noon, when Thomas Jefferson – his bitter political opponent – was to take office. Adams stayed up late filling out all the paperwork and getting the signatures. He delivered them to his Secretary of State, John Marshall, but there was a problem.
Marshall couldn’t keep up with all the paperwork. He simply ran out of time. At noon, he gave the papers to the next Secretary of State, James Madison, and hoped that it would get done. But Madison was ordered not to do his job: to sit on it, and keep the judges from being named.
Well, one would-be judge – a Mr. Marbury would have nothing of this. He decided to file a case in the Supreme Court with the new justice – the old Secretary of State, John Marshall. Should have been a slam dunk, no? Well, just one problem. Now that Jefferson was in power, Marshall realized that whatever he said relied on Thomas Jefferson to enforce. And Thomas Jefferson was in no mood to give any power to some guy in the other party like Mr. Marbury.
He was in a bit of a bind, no? He realized that in a power play, he was going to lose. If he said, “Yes, Marbury gets his job,” nobody would enforce it, and the Court would look even weaker. If he said “No,” then that would mean more judges from the other party.
He had no way to win, so he decided to lose well. John Marshall decided to steal a page right out of Jesus’ own book. Jesus had said, He who wants to save his life must lose it, and so, politically, John Marshall committed political suicide. He made the decision – No, Marbury wouldn’t get the job. Jefferson won.
But in losing this battle, Marshall ended up winning the war. In writing what was really his own defeat, he decided to explain the reasoning. The Supreme Court, he said, had the power to review laws, if not to enforce the paperwork of the other branches. The President was the Supreme servant, but the Court was sovereign in respect to laws.
This was not good for Jefferson. You see, Jefferson didn’t want the Court to have that right, but he couldn’t really challenge a case he had ostensibly won. In losing his political case, Marshall had actually won. Winning by losing was a great political strategy because it was the right biblical strategy. Jesus is saying that here.
Palm Sunday
Just as Jesus triumphantly enters Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, Jesus told his disciples “the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” But then, he decided to tell them how he was going to be glorified, and I doubt they liked it very much.
We don’t normally get parables in John, but Jesus gives this one anyway. He says:
24 Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. 25 Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. 26 Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor.
Dying in order to live, giving up in order to keep, serving in order to be honored. It seems strange, doesn’t it? But in a backwards world, it make sense that things must be turned around in order to be made straight. We are born with death. Is it so strange that we must die in order to live? We were born to glorify God. Is it so strange that in doing what we were born to do, we would find honor in that?
You see, if anything is struggling to compete against God’s glory, it’s going to lose. There are lot of things that have to die – power, sin, even our own righteousness. But if it is willing to die against the glory of God, it will live to the glory of God.
Power
Let me help you think about this way. A lot of people think, oh, if we can just get power, we can do great things for the Kingdom. We think that in politics all the time. Well, that might be true – but you and I both know what happens with political power. The person who gets in office begins to love power more than the reason they wanted power in the first place. Power becomes sin, sin begets destruction, and someone else realizes they need to step in to clean up the mess.
How could God honor anything that would desire to compete with him?
In Jesus Christ Superstar, I like how Andrew Lloyd Webber (correction: Tim Rice wrote the lyrics) puts it in the song “Poor Jerusalem.” As they ride into Jerusalem, Simon the Zealot decides to tell Jesus that he could “keep them yelling their devotion, but add a touch of hate at Rome.” You could rise to a greater power! He says – and you’d get the glory, you’d get the power, you’d get the glory, forever and ever, amen!
But Jesus knows better. Neither you, Simon, nor the fifty thousand, understands what power is, understands what glory is, understands at all. If you knew the truth, you’d close your eyes – To conquer death, you only need to die, you only need to die.
For a secular playwright, he understood what Jesus was saying – if you want to live, sometimes, you need to die. If you want real power, tap into the source of Resurrection power. But how can you tap into Resurrection without death?
Sin
I don’t know about you, but I don’t particularly like dying. I am long steeped in the tradition that if you just keep at it, one day, you’ll succeed. But Jesus never says that work harder is going to get you eternal life.
If you want to live without sin for instance, you need to die to sin. Just deciding that I don’t want to do it as much any more won’t do. You have to die to it. That may mean cutting things out of your life that you enjoy.
I know a gambling addict who still hasn’t realized that if he wants to stop gambling, he needs to stop going online to the poker games. That needs to die. I know people who want to stop the drugs and the alcohol, and yet they still want to go to parties. But if you want to die, you may need to give it up. That means part of your life will die.
If your friends cause you to sin, those relationships need to die. If you watched Larry King this week, you may have heard that our patron martyr Paris Hilton found God during her unending incarceration. She’s going to clean up her act. But get this – even she said that she was going to have to give up some of her friends.
A friend of mine used to say that Jesus promised to deliver us from our enemies, but he never promised to deliver us from our friends. If sin is our friend, we will never be delivered from it. But if we let those friendships die, we can be saved. If Paris Hilton can get that, so should we.
You see, glorifying God is only possible when sin has died. We don’t use dirty cups when we celebrate communion. There is no room in a dirty cup for a perfect God to fill it. But then why would we think that we could use dirty lives to worship God?
If you want to live, something may have to die. If you want Easter, you must go through Good Friday first.
Righteousness
Sometimes – even good things may have to die. Sometimes it’s those things we thing that are righteous that are competing with God. In our responsive reading, we made an allusion to Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac. Isaac was a blessing from the Lord – he was the legacy that Abraham wanted. But he wasn’t greater than God, and Abraham knew that. If glorifying God meant that Isaac must be sacrificed, so be it.
I tend to agree with the scholars who think that Abraham must have understood the Resurrection, if he was willing to put Isaac to death. My guess is that he thought God would raise him back from the dead. But he still would have had to see his dream die. He was willing to put not just his son – but his dreams on that altar – just so God would be glorified.
Churches can get fixated on buildings and programs and personalities very easily. But if any of these things take away from glorifying Jesus – they may have to die before they can be used.
Sometimes large churches can get so focused on their buildings and their programs that they live for themselves. Sometimes they need to die. Sometimes small churches enjoy fellowship and being with people “like us” so much that it takes precedence over glorifying God. Remember, God calls all nations and all tongues to himself. The moment a church becomes the exclusive club of any one group – be it ethnic or social or even theologically, it may need to die.
But I have some good news for you – the beauty of Christ is that death is no longer a permanent thing. Resurrection – the willingness to die – means greater life. A church that is willing to die to itself can do great things when it abandons all for the surpassing knowledge of knowing him. A sinful life that is willing to die to what it knows is wrong can be glorified in ways that it didn’t even know it could live. A life that is willing to live in power that is not its own will have power that defies explanation.
But first, it may have to die.
Every church that has lasted more than one generation has already seen this at work. People die, and they leave the church to their children. With every generation, the church dies and is reborn. That’s how it works. The only alternative would be to fill up the pews with cadavers! By allowing ourselves to continually change, we allow ourselves to continually die – but we also continually live. Who knows, in a decade, I can see Long Branch as Iglesia Bautista de Long Branch. It actually sounds nice – doesn’t it? To be reborn as something new – that’s what our God can do!
Dying to New Life
I had to learn that the hard way when it came to marrying the best woman God ever created. The moment I met Susan, I thought she was the best thing in the whole world, and I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. She, on the other hand, didn’t see it that way. I was a nice-enough friend, but that was all it would be.
You see, I wanted her so much that my priorities were out of order. For six years I was focused on just being with her. I was so focused on her, that ultimately I left God out of the picture. When she left for the Nepal back in ‘96, I was devastated. I thought she was gone for good. Trust me, it was a bad time.
After a year of her being gone, I was still thinking about her, and so I realized I needed closure. I decided to go to Nepal with the explicit intent of ending the relationship. No more email, no more wanting to be with her. it was going to be done. We spent three nice weeks together, and then I left.
On the way back home, I visited Jerusalem, and I wrote the letter that changed my life. It wasn’t to Susan – it was to God. I said, “God, that woman belongs to you, and you are more important than she is. I’d love to be with her, but it’s more important to be with you. I ask you would keep that straight in my life, and that the relationship would die.” I stuck in the stones there at the Wailing Wall and I wailed. As far as I was concerned, after six years of wanting this woman, that relationship was dead.
But now that it was dead, that relationship could finally be used for Christ’s glory. It was that same day that Susan wrote me an email saying maybe there could be a relationship. Maybe we could think about dating. And that was the beginning of a courtship that’s still going.
She is the second best thing that has happened in my life – short of knowing God, marrying Susan was the best thing I’ve ever done. But to the extent that I was unwilling to sacrifice Susan before God, I would never have her.
I love this church, too. But to the extent that I or we love the church more than God, we will never her either. God is in the business of being glorified. Anything that detracts is an idol that must die before him. Anything that will surrender to glorifying him will in turn be glorified. It isn’t because he’s mean or proud, but even God cannot resurrect that which is not dead.
But once he does, talk about Glory! Talk about his glory, and we’ll get to be a part of that. It won’t happen in our strength, it will only happen because he will give the increase. So let’s ask him now, shall we?
Let’s pray:
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Regardless of what you may think about the politics of the Supreme Court of the United States, there is no denying the power of the Supreme Court of the United States. I have no desire to talk about the politics this morning, but on this Fourth of July, it is useful to consider the power of this third branch of government, because it taps into a principle that Jesus himself taught – that in order to secure something, often you need to give it up.
The Supreme Court is composed of nine unelected men and women appointed for life. And yet, they have the power to overturn elected Congresses and Presidents. Later historians have come to realize that they are a check and balance on history itself – ensuring that the power of the people is not biased against future generations. But here’s the interesting thing – most historians have also come to realize that the Founding Fathers never intended for them to have any power at all.
Forgive the civics lesson, but if you look at the Constitution, you’ll see that the Congresses’ duties, specified in Article one, extend over ten sections and enumerate all sorts of power they are to have. Article II, talking about the President, gives him military power, powers of appointment, and more. But when you come to Article III, talking about the Court, you just get one simple sentence:
The judicial Power of the United States shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.
It just says, “Let there be a court, and there was a court.” Nothing more really. And, at least for the first ten years, it really wasn’t more than that. To be on the Supreme Court was worse than being Vice President. You didn’t even get to the Senate to break votes. You were in what was clearly the last branch of the government. The Court really wasn’t anything until a landmark case called Marbury v. Madison.
Now, lest you think that shady politics is unique to our time, consider the case of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. In 1801, these men were not friends to say the least. But John Adams was the outgoing president, and Thomas Jefferson had been elected to take his place. And so, two days before Jefferson was to take over, Adams decided to stack the court. He nominated as many judges as he could in those last two days, with the hope that he’d still have power, even after he was out of office.
There was only one problem – he was so busy nominating people, that his Secretary of State – John Marshall – didn’t have the time to file all the paperwork. Noon at Inauguration Day came, and the new Secretary of State James Madison took over. All the papers were signed, but they hadn’t been delivered. And this new Secretary of State – James Madison – just decided, he wasn’t going to do anything about it. He just threw away the appointments.
Well, one of these guys who didn’t get the job got a wee bit angry at this.
…
It seems kind of strange, doesn’t it? If you love your life, you’ll lose it. If you’re willing to hate this one, you’ll get an eternal one. If you honor, you need to serve. It seems all backwards – but in a world that is itself too often all backwards, doesn’t it make sense that to be right, we’d need to go backwards?
The opposite of opposite is actually the way things are supposed to be. If you want to really live, you may need to die. This is true with sin, and this is true with our righteousness. Everything that comes before God must be willing to be under him – it must be willing to die to itself – if it is to be used for God.
- Supreme Court
- Principle throughout scripture: We have to die before we can be resurrected
o Romans, Galatians, Corinthians
o Abraham and Isaac
o Jesus’ parable – the closest thing to a parable in John
o There is no Easter without Good Friday
- In our lives
o In Nature – pruning a tree so it will grow more
o Paris Hilton discovering that you friendships need to die
o No matter how cherished – sins need to die
o Andrew Lloyd Webber: “Poor Jersualem/To conquer death, you only need to die”
- Anything that is an idol in our lives has to die before God will be glorified
- In our church – we may have to die, giving up cherished things like buildings, etc…
- Susan on the altar
