This is our 5th week of talking about your bucket list. I want to say how encouraging it was for our student ministry to jump up and challenge us last week to say what needs to be said! Their enthusiasm is contagious, and catching that is a whole lot better than catching the flu, isn’t it?
This whole idea of creating a list of things to make sure we get done while we still have time isn’t so original – but there aren’t enough people who do it. How’s your bucket list?
Have you…
invested in what matters?
figured out what’s true?
gotten uncomfortable?
had an awkward conversation with someone?
We’ve seen how each of these are really items that the Bible shows us we need to buck up and do! Once again, this week, I heard of another small group that’s undertaking a project to invest in what matters. You can do that as a group, or as an individual. And then, Sunday, Feb. 26 (3 weeks!) we’re going to share the news of those projects on Kick the Bucket Sunday!
This morning, I want to challenge you to add to your list “Walk where you can’t see.”
Walking where you can’t see is simply another way of saying, “Do something that requires faith.” In fact, it gets to the very essence of faith! I get that idea from a couple places. One is…
2 Corinthians 5:7
We live by faith, not by sight.
And the other is…
Hebrews 11:1-2
Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for.
One of those “ancients” is Abram, later renamed Abraham – the poster boy of walking where you can’t see. We join him in Haran. He had traveled there from Ur with his father and family, nearly 600 miles on the way to what is modern day Israel. But when they arrived at Haran, Abraham’s father stopped traveling.
Genesis 12:1-6
The LORD had said to Abram, "Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you. 2 "I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you." 4 So Abram left, as the LORD had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he set out from Haran. 5 He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Haran, and they set out for the land of Canaan, and they arrived there. 6 Abram traveled through the land as far as the site of the great tree of Moreh at Shechem. At that time the Canaanites were in the land.
It takes just a few sentences to read, but what that describes is a major journey of some 500 miles over treacherous conditions. Abraham left security and instead went where God told him to go. Listen to Hebrews 11 describe it:
Hebrews 11:8-10
By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.
Did you see that? He did not know where he was going!
Walking where you can’t see can be hard, but a man of faith named Abraham handled it. That one act of faith in Abraham’s life becomes just one of many. And Abraham is just one example of many of people who are told to do something that requires faith, and they do it. Walk where you can’t see. Before he died, Abraham was able to check this off his bucket list.
I’ve ridden some pretty exciting roller coasters over the years. I like to think it’s a courageous thing to strap yourself in and get hurtled all over, turned upside down, and then dumped out at the end of the ride. (This past summer, we helped Jacob Knowlton, age 10, become a man by getting him on Raging Bull!) But really, before I ever get in that seat, thousands of people have already been in it before me. And when it goes hurtling through the air, it’s following the exact same track that it has done thousands and thousands of times before. I trust that it’s completely safe, and my life isn’t in danger.
But what if it wasn’t on a track? What if it was up in the middle of the air, free flying? What if the outcome of the ride wasn’t so predictable? What if it was…riding a rocket into space?
I want to show a clip from the movie Apollo 13 – based on the true story of the mission that ran into problems and ended up just barely making it back to earth safely. What I really like about this segment is the way it draws you into the adventure of flying off into space – not on a track, and on a trip where a lot of things could go wrong.
(play Apollo 13 clip – 2:35)
I wish there was a way every one of us could recapture that sense of adventure about being a Christian!
Life in Jesus is a walk, headed somewhere you can’t see. That’s why the one thing I want to get across this morning is II Co 5:7 – We walk by faith, not by sight – and just consider what that means in practical terms for all of us, regardless of where you’re at in life. How do we get this on our bucket lists?
First it means you…
1. Can’t Look Back
When Abraham left Haran, he left his old life behind – his father and his other relatives. The only things he took were his family and possessions. He didn’t keep a summer house back in Haran. He didn’t hold stock or livestock there. He burned his bridges and left his old life behind.
Whenever you read about “The Promised Land” and Israel, it wasn’t land that God promised to give to Abraham. In Gen 23, when his wife dies, he doesn’t even own a place to bury her, so he asks the locals to sell him a cave at Machpelah. That’s how much of the Promised Land Abraham called his own – a cave to use for burying people. That was it. He’d left his land behind.
Ur and Haran were centers of the pagan moon god named Sin. (Picture of Ur ziggurat) Even the names Terah, Laban, and Milcah contain some hint of allegiance to the moon god. Abraham’s father and grandfather worshiped other gods. That’s likely what Abraham grew up doing too, but Abraham left them behind.
When I look at Abraham, it helps me realize that walking where you can’t see means there’s a pile of stuff we leave behind. Jesus said it this way,
Luke 9:62
"No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God."
Jesus said this right after 3 different people had considered following Him, but first they wanted to take care of some things. Jesus’ message to them was pretty clear. When you plow, you don’t look back. And when you follow Jesus, you don’t look back at your old life and long for it or try to find comfort from it as a substitute. It will make your new walk crooked. You need to leave it behind.
Walking where you can’t see means you don’t look behind. Don’t put your hand to the plow and look back. Committing to follow Jesus means you leave the old life behind – old habits, the things in which you used to find your delight, the old set of priorities, wrong relationships, old ways of thinking.
Ill - At Six Flags they have little cubby shelves where you’re encouraged to put your hat, your sunglasses, your phone, your false teeth – whatever might fall off during the ride. I think that some people think there are imaginary cubby shelves involved in following Jesus. “Here, just put that stuff in here before you get on. You can pick it up when this is over.”
How many have tried to enter life in Jesus but temporarily set aside their wallet, or their bad habit, or their wrong relationship, or their schedule, or anything else about their life that they still aren’t willing to turn over to Jesus?
When you commit to live for Jesus you don’t have a pile of stuff that you set aside and then stuff back into your pockets later. Walking where you can see means you don’t look back.
2. Can’t See Where You’re Going
Joke: The photographer from CNN rushed to the airport. He was to meet up with a twin engine plane reserved to fly him over a recent forest fire. He arrived at the airfield and spotted the plane, warming up outside a hanger. He jumped in, slammed the door shut, and shouted, “Let’s go!” The pilot taxied out, faced into the wind and took off.
Once they were up in the air, the photographer told the pilot, “OK, fly me over the valley and make low passes so I can get pictures of the fires on the hillsides.”
“Why?” asked the pilot.
“Because I’m a photographer for CNN,” he said. “And I need to get some close-up shots.”
The pilot was awkwardly silent for a moment. Finally, he stammered, “So, what you’re saying is…you’re NOT my flight instructor?”
You can tell when you’re behind someone on the road who’s unsure of where they’re going – or else they’re driving under the influence – driving way too slow, looking all over the place, hitting the breaks a lot. You get behind someone like that and you say, “He must not know where he’s going.”
That was Abraham on this trip. He didn’t know where he was headed. I would have bought “The Land of Canaan for Dummies” or at least checked my iPhone or something!
God told Abraham, “Go to the land which I will show you…” He didn’t know where he was going. Traveling on foot, with all you own, dependent upon the land, with no friend or family to bail you out if you run into trouble. That’s walking where you can’t see. Just think of it as driving down State Street during Christmas time, blindfolded, with God in the backseat saying, “Trust Me. I’ll tell you what to do.”
No matter how hard you may try, you can see only so far ahead anyway. At some point, you have to trust God or just come to a standstill.
But what if God does have your back? What if God can handle the details for things you can’t see or know? What if God can see and know it all and He can be trusted too? Then, maybe we could possibly walk where we can’t see! Abraham had that mindset.
Sometimes the help we need is to be reminded that God can see the road ahead. Walk where you can’t see, and remember as you do that God can see! While you do that, it will also mean you…
3. Can’t Stay Where You Are
Hebrews 11:8-10 By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.
Living in what? Tents. Tent means temporary. That’s the point of this part of Heb 11. Abraham lived like someone who wasn’t staying, as did his son and grandson.
Now, I like sleeping in a tent, but I like it because it means I’m camping.
When you’re living as someone who’s just passing through, things are different. Just the basic stuff of life, like staying dry, warm, and eating, becomes a lot more work. If you’re not staying where you are, it changes a lot about it, doesn’t it?
Every week, there’s someone here who has had to deal with the harshness of reality. There’s someone who has received bad news. There’s someone struggling. There are people dealing with heavy loads.
Sometimes we need to be reminded that this is a camping trip. Maybe your bed is lumpy. Maybe the tent leaks when it rains. Maybe there are bugs and sunburn and wind and storms. There’s a reason life gets that way: this is a camping trip. This isn’t our home.
2 Corinthians 5:1-2 (MSG)
For instance, we know that when these bodies of ours are taken down like tents and folded away, they will be replaced by resurrection bodies in heaven—God-made, not handmade—and we'll never have to relocate our "tents" again. Sometimes we can hardly wait to move—and so we cry out in frustration. Compared to what's coming, living conditions around here seem like a stopover in an unfurnished shack, and we're tired of it! We've been given a glimpse of the real thing, our true home, our resurrection bodies!
People who plan on leaving their campsite don’t drive their stakes in so deep that they’ll be hard to pull up later. Neither do people who know that Heaven is our real home live like they’re never going to leave here. That’s part of walking where you can’t see. You’re just passing through. Here’s one more important part. You…
4. Can’t Ignore the Future
Abraham left everything, he didn’t know where he was going, he lived in temporary housing for the rest of his life here. How could he handle all that?
Hebrews 11:10 (MSG)
Abraham did it by keeping his eye on an unseen city with real, eternal foundations—the City designed and built by God.
He wasn’t really looking for the country that would belong to Israel some 700 years later. Abraham was looking to live in Heaven forever! And it wasn’t just Abraham. Look at the other people who were doing things that required faith:
Hebrews 11:13-16a
All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country--a heavenly one.
You can do this when you’ve accepted that where you’re at isn’t as good as where you plan to go. So, I have to ask you today: What are you looking for? The person who walks where he can’t see is a person who’s always looking ahead to the final destination.
Isn’t it strange – the way our society tries to get us to admire people – overpaid sports stars, TV and movie stars, musicians. We’re told they are the people who have “found it.” I know there are exceptions among them. Yet, they’re people who, as a group, seem the most confused about satisfaction and fulfillment and life. Why would we take our cues from them? Why would we allow our lives to become consumed by the here and now, when all of it is going away? Everyone who goes there ends up with the same symptoms of dissatisfaction.
What does that dissatisfaction tell us? What does a longing for better things tell us? C.S. Lewis looked at it and said it tells us we’re made for a world different than this flawed one.
"If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others to do the same." (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity)
Walking where you can’t see doesn’t mean you just forget about the future. It means you long to see it. And if there is Someone there Who can guide you who is reliable, He won’t mislead you. You can do this!
Conclusion:
We’re going to sing a song together in just a moment, so I’m going to ask our worship team to make their way up here…
This is a song that talks about the way we’ve gone through different experiences – some of them pretty challenging. But, when we reflect back on them, we can have the confidence in God to say that He never let us go through those things alone.
You may well already be walking where you can’t see, but it isn’t because you want to. My prayer for you today is that you’ll be able to look back on these moments and agree with these words – that God was faithful through the whole time. That he never leaves us on our own… Song
Invitation
I doubt that John Relyea thought as he got up Tuesday morning, January 11, 2005, “This is going to be the day I leave this world and go on to forever.” He and his wife Marsha had given 23 years of their lives working together in Papua, New Guinea, with the Aruamu people. They had learned their language, analyzed it, developed a written language, and translated the NT into it. That 23-year work was just headed to print for the very first time. I doubt that John expected to walk across the room in their house in Madang, collapse from a sudden heart attack, and step into eternity.
If you’re looking for a promise that your heart will continue to beat as you pass through the exit door from this building, that your lungs will continue to draw and exhale air, I’m sorry. No one can give that to you.
If you’re looking for a guarantee that you’re going to be able to walk out of here and that no one will pull out in front of you or that you won’t be hit from behind by a cement truck, I’m sorry. No one can give that to you.
If you’re looking for the certainty that you won’t be attacked by terrorists, crushed in an earthquake, or struck by a falling airplane before you go to bed tonight, I’m sorry. No one can give that to you.
This life is temporary. No matter what you do, you’ll be walking to some future you can’t see.
But if you want an absolute certainty that, not matter what happens from this moment forward, when you leave this life, you’ll be taken by God to live in His presence forever, there’s Someone who can give that to you. Only Jesus can give you that certainty. What you need to do is accept it from Him. What are you looking for?
