Olympic Faith
Part Two: “Naked Faith”
Hebrews 12:1-2, 12-13
Trey Harris
It’s interesting that some of the most difficult trials we endure are the ones that often shape our character and form our memories. I know from talking to people who lived through the Great Depression that theirs lives were shaped and influenced by their experiences of living with a lack of money and food and perhaps even basic shelter. Men and women who have fought in armed conflict be it WWII or Korea or Vietnam or the Gulf War and now Iraq and Afghanistan come back with stories that shape the rest of their lives.
While I haven’t lived through the Great Depression or been engaged in armed conflict I have been to the U.S. Army’s Officers’ Candidate School. Granted, it was Chaplain OCS, a kinder, gentler OCS, but it was OCS none-the-less.
One of the things we had to endure while in OCS was a three day field exercise. We, a bunch of chaplains and chaplain candidates, preachers in real life, had to pack for the field, including tents, gear, food and everything else we needed, load it into a deuce and a half truck, travel to the field packed into buses like sardines and then unload, unpack and set up camp.
I never realized how useless most preachers are until I tried to pitch a tent with ten of them.
One of the memories ingrained in my psyche is that of sleeping in a mummy bag one extremely cold night. The first night in the field, the temperature dipped into the single digits and I nearly froze. I got little if any sleep and was complaining to my fellow chaplain buddies when one of the NCO’s walked up.
He said, “How were you dressed when you crawled into your bag, sir?”
“I had on everything I could find to put on and I still nearly froze.”
“Well, Chaplain, that’s the problem. You were wearing too much. If you’re going to sleep on a cold night, you have to strip down to nothing. To survive the cold in the field, you have to get naked at night.”
I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed getting that information. But, the next night, instead of layering up, I stripped off. And guess what, my NCO friend was right. I survived the experience by stripping off as much clothing as I possibly could.
When we face particularly difficult situations in life, it is our human tendency to do as I did when facing a bitter cold night in a tent; we want to “put on” as much protection as we possibly can.
When we are hurt by someone we love we want to place a shield of protection around us, wanting to avoid any more pain.
When we have been through financial hardships we tend to become people who store up for a rainy day not wanting to experience the lack of lean times again.
If we have been hurt by the church, or by the members or the pastor of a church, we put up walls to protect our emotions and feelings because we never want to be hurt again.
This stuff we pick up along the walk of life is sometimes referred to as baggage.
As natural as that reaction to life might be, it is not biblical. The author of Hebrews must have known something of the baggage that comes with life. For after describing the lives of many people of great faith from Israel’s history, he urges his readers to run the race set before them (and us) with endurance by setting aside any and every thing that hinders or holds back the pace, especially, we are reminded the sin that hinders our progress.
Ross Tooley, a missionary for Youth with a Mission for over 30 years, wrote a book about his life’s experiences called “Naked Faith”. In it, he contends that the only way to face life and all its challenges is with “Naked Faith”. In other words, Ross might say, as you have heard and will hear me say, people, places and things will let you down, but God will not! So face life with all its challenges with “naked faith” in God. Naked Faith is one that acknowledges God and God alone as the answer to our problems prayers and possibilities.
Concerning “Naked Faith” Oswald Chambers wrote:
“Am I willing to reduce myself down to simply “me”? Am I determined enough to strip myself of all that my friends think of me, and all that I think of myself? Am I willing and determined to hand over my simple naked self to God? Once I am, He will immediately sanctify me completely, and my life will be free from being determined and persistent toward anything except God.”
One day during the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln was told by an admirer that in his home state the welfare of the nation was said to depend on “God and Abraham Lincoln.”
Lincoln replied, “You are half right!” (1)
I want to talk to you this morning about developing an Olympic Faith, by first cultivating a naked faith.
First of all, we might start by taking a…
I) Look Back (v 1)
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith…
What’s the old saying? Hindsight is 20/20. Even if you were raised in a family that did not attend church or had no spiritual compass God has provided for you a book filled with heroes, examples of the Christian faith after which you might pattern your life.
Paul wrote: "I have given you an example to follow." (John 13:15)
A brief, simple, but expressive eulogy was pronounced by Martin Luther upon a pastor named Nicholas Haussmann at Zwickau Germany in 1522.
“What we preach, he lived,” said the great reformer.
What you hear preached on Sunday mornings has been lived by people of great faith throughout the history of the church. Pick up your Bible, read Hebrews chapter 11 and then look up some of the names listed there and gain wisdom and insight into what living by faith in God alone can mean to you and your family.
ILL: If the Bible were being put together for the first time right now, what would we put in it? What are the stories of faith that continue to inspire us?
In his book Living Above the Level of Mediocrity, Charles Swindoll quotes Bruce Larson, retelling an experience from his childhood that could qualify. Larson begins:
“When I was a small boy, I attended church every Sunday at a big Gothic Presbyterian bastion in Chicago. The preaching was powerful and the music was great. But for me, the most awesome moment in the morning service was the offertory, when twelve solemn, frock-coated ushers marched in lock-step down the main aisle to receive the brass plates for collecting the offering. These men, so serious about their business of serving the Lord in this magnificent house of worship, were the business and professional leaders of Chicago.
One of the twelve ushers was a man named Frank Loesch. He was not a very imposing looking man, but in Chicago he was a living legend, for he was the man who had stood up to Al Capone.
In the prohibition years, Capone’s rule was absolute. The local and state police and even the Federal Bureau of Investigation were afraid to oppose him. But single-handedly, Frank Loesch, as a Christian layman and without any government support, organized the Chicago Crime Commission, a group of citizens who were determined to take Mr. Capone to court and put him away.
During the months that the Crime Commission met, Frank Loesch’s life was in constant danger. There were threats on the lives of his family and friends. But he never wavered. Ultimately he won the case against Capone and was the instrument for removing this blight from the city of Chicago.”
Frank Loesch had risked his life to live out his faith.
Larson continues, “Each Sunday at this point of the service, my father, a Chicago businessman himself, never failed to poke me and silently point to Frank Loesch with pride. Sometime I’d catch a tear in my father’s eye. For my dad and for all of us this was and is what authentic living is all about.” (2)
There are examples of Olympic faith all around us. Men and women who put their faith in God ahead of their own personal safety and did what they thought God wanted them to do no matter the risk, no matter the cost.
The first step in experiencing naked faith might be for us to look back to examples of people of great faith; the next might be for us to…
II) Look Around (v 1)
…let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily hinders our progress.
Now, I know we will all acknowledge that sin hinders our walk with Christ. And, if sin hinders our walk then we will surely have trouble running as well. So, our author tells us, “strip off every weight that slows us down.” In other words, anything that would keep you from running the race of your life has to go.
We have become so casual with sin in this country we either don’t recognize it as sin or we refuse to believe it’s sin because to do so would require a change of attitude or behavior on our part.
The obvious sins of adultery and sexual promiscuity and perverse sexuality are paraded out each night on our televisions as though nothing were wrong with sleeping around or violating the marriage covenant.
I happened to be in a room this week where Maury Povich was on TV. I was absolutely disgusted to see and hear the constant bleeping of profanity as one pagan after another paraded their pathetic, promiscuous little lives in front of the cameras for all America to see. And what makes it worse is that these shows (and there are many) are on the air because people watch them.
We’ve become so inoculated against sin that we don’t even flinch when we see acts of sex and violence portrayed night after night in our living rooms. We see and hear so much blatant sin in the entertainment media that when it comes to making righteous decisions, holy decisions about how we live our lives or how we raise our children we’re hindered because we’re so acculturated by the sin we’ve allowed ourselves to be exposed to.
Friends, sin is serious stuff. Jesus thought it so serious he urged his listeners to cut off a hand or pluck out an eye rather than allow sin to creep into their lives. (Matthew 5:30)
Many people laugh and giggle when I rant and rail about the dangers of casino gambling and the state sponsored lottery. You might say things like, “Well, he’ll like it if I win the lottery and give the church a big ol’ donation!”
First of all, if you aren’t tithing to the church now, what makes you think winning the lottery will change your heart?
Secondly, in your heart of hearts you know you are coveting wealth you haven’t earned and are spending God’s money in pagan casinos instead of tithing your treasures to the church.
In Louisiana, the consumption (might I say over consumption, read abuse) of alcohol is so prevalent and common that I’ve been to Methodist church gatherings where the punch bowl was spiked and half the people at the party were tipsy by the time I got there. Friends, those of you who know me best know I’m no prude, but I have to tell you that a casual attitude towards alcohol is a slippery slope to tread. Is it a sin to have a glass of wine with dinner? I can’t prove that by Scripture. But what I can prove is that anything we do that would cause a brother to stumble is a sin. (1 Corinthians 8:1-12)
Here’s what I mean: if someone struggling with alcohol addiction or a bad gambling habit sees you, a faithful member of NewSong, at the convenient store buying booze and lottery tickets then they will think what’s OK for you must be OK for them and perhaps become deeper entrenched in destructive behavior.
Oh, so you say that’s not your problem? I beg to differ and apparently so does Jesus. Listen: It would be better to be thrown into the sea with a large millstone tied around the neck than to face the punishment in store for harming one of these little ones. (Luke 17:2)
God abhors sin. He loves each individual person, but God does not like your sin. It’s not funny to God, it’s not cute to God and no one but you is laughing. God told his people long ago that if they wanted to be his people they would have to behave like his people: You must be holy because I am holy. (Leviticus 11:44) That means look at your own life, be brutally honest with yourself about the sin in your life and begin to deal with it. Look around at how you spend your leisure time and your resources and yes, even with whom you spend your time and begin to listen to the Holy Spirit directing your actions and behaviors.
"Now may the God of peace make you holy in every way, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless until that day when our Lord Jesus Christ comes again. God, who calls you, is faithful; he will do this." (1 Thessalonians 4:3NLY)
Hear me this morning, if you are engaged in a destructive, sinful habit, you cannot be all God wants you to be. You can’t run the race, much less finish the race, you can’t even walk the walk. “…strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily hinders our progress.”
The King James Version says: “…the sin which doth so easily beset us.” The word beset or hinders is translated from a Greek word which means “to keep standing around”. In other words, if you don’t get rid of the sin in your life, then as far as your walk with Christ is concerned, you’re just standing around. John Wesley said that if you aren’t moving forward in your walk with Christ, then you are falling backwards. When it comes to our relationship with God, we are to be constantly moving forward, moving deeper, closer. We can’t do that if we’re allowing sin to keep us standing around and falling back.
Later in this same chapter the author of Hebrews writes: Try to live in peace with everyone, and seek to live a clean and holy life, for those who are not holy will not see the Lord. (Hebrews 12:14)
God takes sin seriously, and so should we. So, if we want to develop an Olympic Faith, we need to have a naked faith and we start by looking back at great examples of the Christian Faith, then looking around at our own lives being honest in respect to our own walk with Christ and then we…
III) Look Ahead (v 2)
We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, on whom our faith depends from start to finish.
A mother was preparing pancakes for her sons, Kevin, age 5, and Ryan, age 3. The boys began to argue over who would get the first pancake. Their mother saw the opportunity for a moral lesson. "If Jesus were sitting here, he would say ’Let my brother have the first pancake, I can wait.’ Kevin turned to his younger brother and said, "Ryan, you be Jesus!" (3)
After recounting harrowing deeds of faith and recalling the lives of the faithful, the author or Hebrews, in chapter 12 begins to outline for us how we, you and I can become know as people of great faith to generations yet to come. After looking back to heroes past, looking around honestly and openly at our own lives in our own age we are now encouraged to look ahead to the race set before us.
Often our life of faith is referred to as our walk with God, but our author paints a different picture. This is no Sunday stroll in the park, no relaxed ramble along the board walk. Friends, this is a race. The author isn’t exhorting us to just to hold on or hang on or count ourselves successful if we don’t lose ground. We are to run. The pace is to be so quick and demanding that all excess weights must be shed.
Throughout this life we saddle ourselves with sin and baggage, adding weight to our spirits even though Christ himself offers to carry it all for us.
Jesus said, “Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.” (Matthew 11:29-30)
Hebrews chapter 12, verse 2 declares Jesus to be both a "pioneer" (or "initiator") and a "perfecter" of our faith. This echoes Hebrews’ earliest chapters which focus their attention on Jesus. Jesus is a "pioneer" because, with his suffering, he opened a new way of faithfulness. Just as the pioneers of this country forged a new way to the west, so Jesus forged a new way to God. But as a "pioneer" Jesus did not break new ground - rather he himself was broken on the cross, opening up this new way for us.
Jesus’ endurance on the cross was a once-and-for-all trial, a perfect act of love. Our endurance is tested along the marathon road of life itself. Jesus suffered the humiliating, torturous death of a criminal, but in total victory overcame death to take his seat at God’s right hand. Keeping our eyes on Jesus’ victory is the only way we will be able to complete our race.
Paul wrote:"For I decided to concentrate only on Jesus Christ and his death on the cross." (1 Corinthians 2:2)
CONCLUSION
Years ago, Dr. D. M. Stearns was preaching in Philadelphia. At the close of the service a young man came up to him and said, "I don’t like the way you spoke about the cross. I think that instead of emphasizing the death of Christ, it would be far better to preach Jesus, the teacher and example."
Stearns replied, "If I presented Christ in that way, would you be willing to follow Him?" "I certainly would," said the young man without hesitation. "All right then," said the preacher, "let’s take the first step. Jesus did not sin. Can you claim that for yourself?"
The man looked confused and somewhat surprised. "Why, no," he said. "I acknowledge that I do sin."
Stearns replied, "Then your greatest need is to have a Savior, not an example!
Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the priceless gain of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I may have Christ and become one with him. (Philippians 3:8-9)
That, my friends is why we must look to Jesus. There have been and will be many fine teachers and examples of the Christian Faith, but there is only one Savior, one Lord and His name is Jesus.
1) http://www.homileticsonline.com/subscriber
2) Bruce Larson, in Charles Swindoll, Living Above the Level of Mediocrity, pp. 124-5.
3) http://www.ozsermonillustrations.com/frames/christlikeness_frameset.htm
