January 10, 2010
Mt. Tabor United Methodist Church
Rescue United Methodist Church
Luke 3:15-22
A funny thing happened last Thursday night, and no I don’t mean Alabama won the national championship. That wasn’t a funny thing……that was a great thing!
The sermon that I had been working on since last Sunday night somehow seemed to be completely lifted off of my heart and became uninspiring.
Yall know better than I that there is probably nothing worse than an uninspired sermon.
In my years of attending church, whether it be a Roman Catholic church or another protestant church, I have heard my fair share of uninspired sermon.
In fact I’m sure y’all would agree that I have probably given some uninspired sermons myself and for that I apologize.
There are times when a minister prepares his/her message that after we read from scripture that we decide to go one direction and then couple of days later (usually Saturday night) we suddenly realize this isn’t what God wants us to say.
We then spend the next few hours playing catch up, we prepare a very disorganized sermon with right message in spirit but totally lacking in substance and merit because we hurriedly put it together just to have a sermon prepared.
There are also those times when we read from scripture and for some reason, whether it be from outside distractions or internal distractions that we simply can’t discern what God wants us to say, so come Friday, Saturday night we put a sermon together with a lot of substance, but not necessarily the message that God had wanted to place on our hearts, just to achieve the goal of having a prepared sermon.
A wise football coach (Saban) once said that you have to pay attention to the process rather than the goal.
Just take a look at the life of a coach first.
It’s not easy to win a championship at ANY level, much less at the national level.
Coaches are judged so much by their win totals and how many championships they win, that they often forget that they are in the business of educating young men and women.
However in reality, they don’t judge a coach by his graduation rate either, you never hear them say, ”Hey coach you finished 0-12 this year, attendance was down 40 percent and fund raising is down 50 percent BUT you graduated 98 percent of your athletes; we want to extend your contract and give you FIVE MILLION DOLLARS A YEAR.
They will even get to the point where they will bend the rules or have others bend the rules for them that way they have plausible deniability.
An example of that is when an Alabama booster paid a high school football coach $200,000 to get his player to sign with Alabama.
Alabama would eventually be charged with “lack of institutional control” and given 5 years probation, a two year bowl ban, lost 21 scholarships over a three year period and narrowly missed being given the “death penalty”; which would have meant that the university would have to disband the football team.
Funny thing is, the player never played a down at Bama. He would eventually be released from his scholarship and he would eventually transfer to Memphis.
Imagine all of this for 17-18 year old young man.
This is definitely a case where the end doesn’t justify the “means”.
In our reading today, God calls out to his son, much like a coach calls out to one of his players.
When a coach comes to a recruit’s home, usually the first thing a coach tells the parent or parent’s is that they are going to look out after the player and keep them safe from harm.
Just a month or so ago several UT basketball players were arrested for armed robbery, this is not an isolated incident, it happens all the time.
When the coach is asked about the incident, the coach usually says I have x amount of players on this team and I can’t watch over each one 24/7.
Much like a coach asks a player to commit to his team, God call on us to commit to his team
When you commit to God, what does the Bible tell us: Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Now let’s face it, Mack Brown, Urban Meyer and Nick Saban don’t just walk into Any players home; for schools like Texas, Florida and Alabama, if you are not at least a three star recruit (one being least talented and five being most talented), and even that is on a rare occasion, the only way you will see their coaches in your home is on the big screen in your living room on Saturdays.
Even then evaluating talent is so subjective.
Former Alabama head coach Bear Bryant coached hundreds of All-Americans during his illustrious coaching career; he even coached a Heisman Trophy winner (John David Crowe), mind you it was while he was at Texas A&M, but he still coached one none the less.
He was asked one time, out of all the players that he has coached, who was his favorite; now you would expect it to be one of his more talented and famous players like Joe Namath, Kenny Stabler or Leroy Jordan... instead it was Pat Trammell.
Although he was an All-American himself, he wasn’t that highly recruited out of Scottsboro high and was never known for his physical ability. Coach Bryant was quoted as saying: “he can't run, he can't pass, and he can't kick - all he can do is beat you."
During his senior season he led Alabama to a perfect 11-0 record and the 1961 national championship. He finished his career at Alabama with a 26–2–4 record for a 0.875 winning percentage.
Talk about being nothing but a winner!
God calls out to each and every one of us; he doesn’t care if you are a one star or a five star. I guarantee when he reached out to me I wasn’t even a one star, I’ll take it a step further; I’m probably no higher than a two star now.
You see it doesn’t matter with God, he doesn’t call the equipped, he equips the called.
Who else could take a young shepherd by the name of David and help him defeat a Philistine giant with a single stone.
Talk about developing talent!
Who else could lead Gideon and 300 Israelites armed with only trumpets; pitchers and torches defeat a Mideon and Amalekite army as numerous as the locust.
Who else could enable Joshua and his army armed with only ram horns to destroy the walled city of Jericho?
Why only God of course!
When you commit to God’s team, upsets aren’t the rarity, they are the norm.
Then again when you commit to God’s team you’re victory is already assured through the death of our savior Jesus Christ.
Now let us not forget that there is another team out there in this game called life, and that is evil led by the crafty Satan…no, no , I said Satan not Saban, although I do believe that there are some folks that believe God sent us Christ, the devil sent Nick Saban.
This belief is particularly popular in the cities of Baton Rouge, Miami and Austin right now.
Satan is very frustrated, donations are up and he is getting better players but he still can’t get his team over the hump for that first victory.
You see Satan used to be on God’s staff so he thinks he knows the playbook, and somehow just doesn’t understand why he can’t turn that corner.
What he just doesn’t understand is that God’s playbook is all out in the open for everyone to see, just because he knows what’s coming, doesn’t mean he or anyone else knows HOW to stop it.
Sort of like the Georgia teams of the early eighties. When you played Georgia back then you knew that Herschel Walker was going to run the ball and there was not a thing you could do to stop it.
The only thing that that brought down Herschel Walker when Georgia executed was gravity and an occasional runaway Mac truck.
When we do what God tells us to do, nothing will stop us; like it says in Romans, If God is with us who is against us.
It is only when we do not do what God tells us to do, when we think we know better than him that we struggle.
There are coaches walking into homes right now saying, you know that you can’t send your child to play for that coach, he’s too strict, he’s too laxed, his coaching doesn’t suit your child, then there’s my favorite , he may not be there in four years.
Satan is doing the same thing to you right now; he’s telling you everything and anything to get you to de-commit from God’s team.
All you have to do is remember is this:
But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us.
For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers,
nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:37-39.
Any good coach will tell his players play your position; a coach will evaluate his talent and put his players where he feels will best suit the team and where he feels a player will succeed.
God does the same thing, he will put you in the best position for you to best serve his kingdom, except that God does not have to evaluate you; for he knew you before you were born.
God will always give you the tools you need to succeed in life, the only question is, will you use them.
Before I close this morning, I would like to say that when I played football, I wasn’t very good; there are many guys out there who can thank me for their college educations. I made them look so good that they got scholarships.
When a player messes up on the field, he is usually called to the sidelines and very sternly and loudly told by the coach what he did wrong, while simultaneously being given a chiropractic adjustment by the same coach, with the help of the decades old tool called the facemask.
I think I went my entire freshman year with my chin stuck to my chest , thanks to all of the nice little chats my coaches had with me during games and practices.
God will not do that when we make mistakes; it’s because of his love for us that we have the loving and forgiving grace of Jesus Christ.
When you make a great play, and you come running off the field, any good coach will smack you on the bottom and say good job.
Likewise, after executing all of the plays of God’s playbook and being totally committed to his team, God will call you to the sidelines of the game of life and say to you, “You are my son; in you I am well pleased.”
The day you accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior you became part of God’s team, and you will achieve the goal of eternal salvation.
Remember; pay attention to the processes rather than the goal.
My question to all of you here today is, when the game of life is ending , will you be on the sidelines in your clean unused uniform watching the clock expire or will you be on the field bloodied and dirtied experiencing the end of the game.
