How to stop
We are following a series called Top Gear and today I want to discus the importance of stopping
In WRC rallying and race cars in General stopping is important.
Brakes are one of the most critical components on WRC racing car. Each car's brake setup is also different for gravel and asphalt rallies, owing to the different demands and usage in each condition.
Stopping and slowing in Christianity are important issues.
When you are living the Christian life on the edge – in Top Gear as the title of this series suggests – you need to know how to accelerate but you also need to know how to stop and when stopping is appropriate. You also need to know when to use your brakes to slow down.
In John chapter 3 verse 16 we read the very famous lines for God so ;loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but shall have everlasting life.
It would have been wrong for Jesus to have stopped halfway through his 3 years of public ministry but there came a day when he did stop – the bible says he set his eyes towards Jerusalem – in the words of the new Zealand road code – prepare to stop.
Prepare to stop.
Jesus was becoming popular and a cult figure – he had gathered popular support because of his compassion and love and he gathered popular support because he exposed the ludicrous religious
Stupidity of His day.
Had he chosen to ride the groundswell of support he enjoyed he could have rode up to be the world leader of his day just as Satan had tempted him to do in his temptations in the wilderness.
But God whispered into his heart Stop.
In fact he had prophesied the stopping of Jesus hundreds of years before his death in the words of the prophet Isaiah. His words are recorded in chapter 53 in the book that bears his name.
Isaiah 53
3 He was despised and rejected by mankind,
a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.
4 Surely he took up our pain
and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
stricken by him, and afflicted.
He – Jesus – took our sin – He heard God say stop -and he stopped.
Jesus applied the brakes and at times we need to too.
In the ten commandments God tells us again and again to stop apply the brakes – Thou shall have no idols before me – God says stop! – Remember the Sabbath – Stop everything for a day - - Thou shalt not commit adultery – stop stop stop says God – God erects huge stop! signs for us That is all about brakes.
Ever seen a steam train stop?
It takes a long time to stop.
In our bible reading today there is stopping involved.
In this incredible story that Jesus tells there are stopping issues for each of the characters involved in the story.
In Ecclesiastes 3
3 To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
The key for the Christian is to understand the time. – When God says stop we are to stop.
In the parable of the Good Samaritan stopping is an issue.
This morning I would like to discus the importance of stopping in this passage.
Firstly the wounded man on the side of the road.
If only he had stopped and thought before he started on his journey.
If it was a rally the navigator would have been shouting stop dangerous curve!
He was obviously a reckless and foolhardy character. People seldom attempted the Jerusalem to Jericho road alone if they were carrying goods or valuables. Seeking safety in numbers, they traveled in convoys or caravans. This man had no one but himself to blame for the plight in which he found himself.
He should have stopped!!!!
How often does our conscience scream stop – how often do we plough on like this traveller and then weep over our stupidity later?
Isn’t there a real need for us to listen to God’s quiet voice and scream stop when we should?
Key point be guided by our conscience (mentored by God’s word.) and not our feelings.
Secondly there is the robbers the brigands.
How did they end up here being criminals. – Something in their circumstances early on said you can get away with this. As time went on they became theives and violent men well out of step with the God who made them. What was the first step. The first step was when their consciences were alert when their conscience still worked and said stop!
We are a “Everyone does it” generation – we need to be alert to that quiet voice of God that tells us to be an early adapter to responding to the voice of God.
The terrible criminal Al Capone from the gangster days of the 1930’s said – All I wanted to do was give people a good time. He ended up a terrible man a murderer and a thief into prostitution and all kind of rackets.
But where did it start – Capone was a catholic – I met a man in Chicago whose Grand Father drove trams for him and regarded him highly – but his downfall started when he failed to hear God say Stop!!!
The robbers refused to stop and that was their downfall.
Watch for the moral downslide.
. 31 A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side.
The Priest passed by on the other side!
Why did he not stop?
One commentator says: He hastened past. No doubt he was remembering that he who touched a dead man was unclean for seven days (Numbers 19:11). He could not be sure but he feared that the man was dead; to touch him would mean losing his turn of duty in the Temple; and he refused to risk that. He set the claims of ceremonial above those of charity. The Temple and its liturgy meant more to him than the pain of man.
But we can refuse to stop too. How often do we prejudge the situation we are seeing. We see a so called no hoper – This will damage my reputation – I’ll be late for the meeting – this money belongs to my family – whatever our concern we fail to Stop. The other day I hitchhiked to oamaru – interestingly – people stopped.
Then I was driving and I picked up a hitchhiker – he was more on his cellphone than in the car – I wondered why I bothered although he did talk a little – then I saw another hitchhiker and I was busy praying – and he looked like a waste of time – was this God’s moment – I didn’t pick him up.
Sometimes God says postpone your agenda and stop for what God has put before you. didn’t Jesus say Matthew 25 37"Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink?
Then there is the Levite He seems to have gone nearer to the man before he passed on. The bandits were in the habit of using decoys. One of their number would act the part of a wounded man; and when some unsuspecting traveller stopped over him, the others would rush upon him and overpower him. The Levite was a man whose motto was, “Safety first.” He would take no risks to help anyone else.
Sometimes common sense says carry on and -wisdom and God -says stop.
If Jesus had protected himself then the cross wouldn’t have happened
If Jesus had asked his Mother I am guessing that she would have said no.
I risked my life last week, sort of, Heathers car got a puncture and it was in a precarious position I took the risk – I risked my life last week I drove from Alexandra to Riversdale Someone could have crossed the line – no real gain in these risks – but sometimes we need to risk reputations – fears and even our personal safety to share Christ with a broken world.
For salvation there has to be death – Jesus died on a cross – 2 Corinthians 5 verse 15 14For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that One died for all, therefore all died. 15And He died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died for them and was raised again.
There it is we can’t live for ourselves we are to live for Christ.
Graham Staines Australian missionary was one such man
Graham Staines cared for the poor. He came to India from Australia in 1965, and became involved in the Leprosy Mission work of treating lepers in Daripada, Orissa. He married his wife Glades in the ‘80s, and together they became very involved in ministry to the poor and helpless. He began outreach into villages with the message of the cross, lifting up Jesus among the tribal people of that area. He had gone to Manoharpur village for an evangelism campaign, and was sleeping in the station wagon outside the local church building when the attack by a mob numbering more than one hundred came.
Glades Staines and her daughter, Esther, are determined to continue the work. Gladys sang the song “Because He Lives” at the funeral of her husband and two sons. She announced her forgiveness of those who had murdered her family. Because of these events, Christ has been proclaimed from the front pages of the newspapers of India. In the face of persecution, many are coming to Jesus from families that have rejected the gospel for years.
In 2004, Christianity Today described this woman as "the best-known Christian in India after Mother Teresa."[2] In 2005, she was awarded the Padma Shri, a civilian award from the Government of India.[3]
What is the Stop here – Stop living for self and live for Christ.
Finally there is the Samaritan – Samaritans were not popular – they were considered second rate. Even today if Samaritans want to be Jews they have to have their conversion recognised.
One commentator says - There was the Samaritan. The listeners would obviously expect that with his arrival the villain had arrived. He may not have been racially a Samaritan at all. The Jews had no dealings with the Samaritans and yet this man seems to have been a kind of commercial traveler who was a regular visitor to the inn. In John 8:48 the Jews call Jesus a Samaritan. The name was sometimes used to describe a man who was a heretic and a breaker of the ceremonial law. Perhaps this man was a Samaritan in the sense of being one whom all orthodox good people despised.
We note two things about him.
(i) His credit was good! Clearly the innkeeper was prepared to trust him. He may have been theologically unsound, but he was an honest man.
(ii) He alone was prepared to help. A heretic he may have been, but the love of God was in his heart.
What did the Samaritan have that no one else had?
The ability to STOP! And making a Priority of stopping when it matters most!
He didn’t hesitate – Personal risk – yes. Cast aside. – yes! Personal discomfort – Yes! Cast aside.
His theology was odd – He would have stood out in any respectable gathering of people as second class – Yet despite his position and maybe because of it – The Samaritan –
Stopped and with a grand gesture of love fulfilled the call to love in the way that Jesus commanded in his teaching.
This was shocking teaching to Jesus’ more orthodox listeners.
Stop – if it fulfills the law – Stop if you are being watched and it fits your watchers criterea – Stop if it doesn’t inconvienience you – stop if it is one of your own kind, stop if it won’t cost you your life.
When my Uncle was in the battle of Guadacanel during world war 2 Somehow he found the courage to risk everything for his country and for the freedom of others. Incredible risk incredible cost.
But what about the Apostle paul and the huge suffering and opposition that he faced to tell people about Jesus.
Paul says of Himself 2 Corinthians 4:8-12 – “ . . . We are perplexed, but not in despair; 9 persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed -- 10 always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. 11 For we who live are always delivered to death for Jesus' sake, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. 12 So then death is working in us, but life in you.
Paul knew how to Stop!
So does Heidi Bakker – She says-
“I believe that Jesus would have given His life for just one person. Jesus emptied Himself, He humbled Himself and He so yielded Himself to His Father's love that He had no ambition of His own. He was not looking to build an empire, He did not want praise or adulation or to impress people with who or how many followed Him. He stopped over and over again for just one person, for just one life.”
― Heidi Baker, Learning to Love: Passion, Compassion and the Essence of the Gospel
“It is when you become immersed in the love of the Father that you truly begin to love like Jesus. He wants to immerse you. He wants to hold you. He wants to take you to a place where you are so far over your head in the river of God that miracles happen all around you. He wants to fill you entirely with His Holy Spirit.”
I can’t tell you what stopping means for your life!
But the bible does and God can in an ongoing basis.
True she works among the orphaned children in Mozambique and true she stops for the one but also true it has an incredible cost.
Who do you want to be.
The unwise traveller? If you want to be wise . be guided by your conscience (mentored by God’s word.) and not your feelings.
The robber or thief – don’t take the wide path Watch for the moral downslide.stop sinning.
The pharisee – postpone your agenda and stop for what God has put before you
The levites -– Stop living for self and live for Christ.
The Samaritan – Stop for love wherever it appears in your pathway.
Immerse yourself in love. Live for love die for love and Stop for the one.
When you do you will be living out Top Gear Christianity.
