When I entered junior high school, I was introduced to track and field games – to things like the 100-yard dash, relay races, and, most of all, the hurdles. As any red-blooded American boy would have done, I had done my share of running and climbing and bicycling and the like. But hurdles I had never seen, nor had I ever tried. I soon found out that there is quite an art to jumping hurdles. You have to pace yourself just right; you have to anticipate which foot you are going to lead with and get it up and over at just the right moment. Then you have to worry about that trailing foot and whether it is going to snag on the hurdle. All of that in a few seconds’ time, and just when you get one hurdle right, a few yards away there is another one. It’s tough. I never got it quite right. Those hurdles tripped me up every time. I just couldn’t coordinate eyes and feet and body. And that was the low hurdles; don’t even talk to me about the high hurdles. When I saw those I just quit trying. Too much!
But now do you know what my real problem was with the hurdles? Was it that I was not strong enough to jump? No, no problem with that. Was it that I was not fast enough? No, I can move fast without any problem. In fact, Rev. Wilson said the other day that she can always tell that it’s me coming down the office corridor, because I walk so fast. That’s not it. No, I could not jump the hurdles because I thought I could not jump the hurdles. My problem was not a physical one; it was a mental one. Because I believed I could not get over the barrier, I truly could not get over the barrier.
Life is like that for many of us. If the way is clear and there are no barriers, we are fine. If our health is good and our bills are paid, we can move. If we’re not in any conflict and not under unusual pressure, we can keep going. If our feet don’t hurt and three square meals are on the table, day by day, we stay calm and we move forward. As they used to say, back in eastern Kentucky where I once lived, “Lord willing and the creek don’t rise, I’ll be there.”
But very, very few of us can really expect to live that way. Very, very few of us can expect to travel an open road, with no barriers. Almost none of us can expect to sail through life on flowery beds of ease, while others fight to win the prize and sail through bloody seas. No, we are going to sail through some bloody seas. We are going to encounter some barriers. We are not going to go forward without jumping some hurdles. It just won’t be. The issue is, then, not whether you can advance without barriers. The issue is whether you can advance without hindrance!
Let me say that again. The issue is not whether you can advance without barriers; the issue is whether you can advance without hindrance. And there is a difference. There is a distinction.
Barriers are things that are set up to challenge you. They prevent you from doing what you want to do easily. Like hurdles, they stand in the way of a quick run around the track. But they are part of the game. They are part of the way life is. As a junior high kid, I could have run around the barriers instead of jumping over them, and believe me, I tried that. But my physical education teacher, Mr. Miller, caught it every time. It was against the rules; it was not the way the game is played. Barriers challenge you, and they are just there; they have to be jumped. And no one is going to whisk through life without barriers. They just are.
But hindrances – now hindrances are different. Hindrances are the conditions of heart and spirit that make barriers insurmountable. Hindrances are the attitudes, the stuff inside you, that make the barriers difficult. My hindrance as a twelve-year-old was the belief that I could not jump those barriers, because I had never tried it before. Never before had I had to do this thing they put in front of me, so I just knew that I could not do it. And so, guess what? I could not. Because I believed in the hindrance. I had a mental problem with it. I could not advance over the barrier because I could not advance without hindrance, I could not advance without first dealing with my attitude of defeat.
Brothers and sisters, today I am convinced that there is no hindrance to your advance or to mine. There are barriers, to be sure, but there need be no hindrance. We can advance without hindrance. We can move forward. There is no need for us to feel that we are will stop in our tracks; there is no hindrance to our advance.
Someone has said that the key to understanding the Acts of the Apostles in the Bible is to notice the last word of the book. The very last word in the Book of Acts is “unhindered”. Akolutos, unhindered, without hindrance. The very last sentence in Acts sums up all that has gone before; it says that the apostle Paul “proclaimed the kingdom of God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance.” Unhindered.
Does that mean that Paul faced no barriers, no hurdles? Does that mean that Paul had it easy and could just sit in an ivory tower and write elegant theological essays for the world to admire? It does not. Where was he when Acts ends? Do you know? He was in prison! Shackled to a Roman soldier – and yet he was unhindered! He was advancing! How can this be?
I
First, Paul felt unhindered because he knew the broad scope of God’s love. He had experienced the kingdom of God. And because he had personally experienced the kingdom, he knew that it had no boundaries, and that God could overcome every barrier. Paul advanced without hindrance because the thing that meant the most to him was his personal experience with the living Christ.
Think back through the Book of Acts. Remember the history. There is that powerful moment when deacon Stephen, full of the spirit of God, preaches to the people on the streets, and gets the crowd excited. Some receive Christ as savior, but others stir up hate, and they stone Stephen. They kill him. And who was it who stood on the sidelines, cheering them on? Who was it who held the cloaks of others while they threw the stones? Saul of Tarsus.
And who was it who went on a crusade against the church? Who was it who thought up acts of terrorism against Christians? Saul of Tarsus. Who was it who got himself a sheaf of warrants and set out to Damascus to root out this Christian thing? Saul of Tarsus again.
But who was it who encountered the living Christ on the road to Damascus and had his entire life turned around? Who was it who was knocked off his horse, got his eyes blinded, and ended up acknowledging as Lord the very one he had cursed? Saul of Tarsus. A changed man. So changed that he even quit using the name Saul and became known by his Roman name, Paul.
The rest is history. You know it. You know that this persecutor of Christians became the foremost missionary of the Christian movement. You know that this one who had breathed out threats and slaughter against the followers of Jesus had become the premier preacher of Jesus. Paul the missionary – did he encounter barriers as he went on his preaching missions? Of course he did. Without question. Beatings, imprisonment, shipwreck, threats, misunderstandings – barriers all. But he advanced without hindrance. Nothing stopped him. Why? Because he had personally encountered the love of God. Because he knew Christ and the power of His resurrection.
Look at him, brought to trial before the Roman governor and then again before King Agrippa. What does he do? He tells his story. He gives his personal testimony. He does not so much theologize or preach as simply to tell his own story. He is about to be sentenced for criminal activity. Wouldn’t you think he would hire a good lawyer? Wouldn’t you think he would try to hide his story? But no! Paul knows that nothing can stop him from moving forward in his life. There are no hindrances, only barriers. There is nothing to hold him back, because he knew personally the call of Christ.
As we licensed Victor Oke today, I thought back some forty-three years. I thought back to that Good Friday in Kinston, North Carolina, where I was working for a chemical factory. I had begun to think that I wanted to preach rather than to be a chemical engineer, as I had first set out to be. I had begun to believe that I ought to stir men’s souls rather than stir up chemical reactions. But I was not sure. On a street in that little town, far away from home, I saw on a crude cross in a churchyard the words, “Is it nothing to you, all you that pass by?” Is it nothing to you? That hit my heart so hard that I never have recovered. Now I knew I could not witness. I knew I could not counsel or pastor or preach or teach. But when I encountered, in that out-of-the-way place, the living God, I knew that I had to do all these things. And that I could do them, by the help of God. Barriers there were, but no hindrance. I could advance without hindrance.
The first key to advancing without hindrance is to know that God loves you; that His kingdom includes you; that who you are and what you do matters to Him. When you know that the infinite God, in all His glory, is paying attention to you, loving you, claiming you, then, I tell you, nothing will stop you. Nothing will hinder you from doing Kingdom business. Nothing.
Paul “proclaimed the kingdom of God … without hindrance.”
II
But let’s take it a step further. Let’s notice that not only did Paul testify to the kingdom in his own life, but it says that he also “taught about the Lord Jesus Christ.” He got outside himself and taught others about the one who had made all the difference. Paul advanced without hindrance because he saw everything that happened as an opportunity to give to others what they needed.
Now I want you to remember Paul’s circumstances as the Book of Acts closes. He has been sent to Rome because, as a Roman citizen, he had the right to appeal his conviction to Caesar. He had been accused of breach of the peace back in Jerusalem, and had spent a long time in prison, waiting for trial, waiting while governors changed and officials did their paperwork and figured out what to do. Paul had been incarcerated for a long while. And now it was going to be even longer – it’s kind of like waiting for the Supreme Court to decide a case. It may take years for a case to make its way up the appeals process and get on the Supreme Court docket. So Paul has to sit in Rome, under arrest, waiting for two years for his case to come up. Down time. Wasted time, we would call it.
But not for Paul. Not for the prince of the apostles. What does the text tell us? He “welcomed all who came to him .. and [taught] about the Lord Jesus Christ”. Paul kept on doing what he knew he was called to do, no matter what the circumstances. His chains were a barrier, but they were no hindrance.
In fact, his chains were an inspiration. Do you know that in one of his letters Paul sends greetings to his readers, and mentions that some of the saints are in Caesar’s household? He has used his imprisonment to make converts! In another of his letters Paul writes with moving eloquence about the whole armor of God, and we imagine that as he did so, he was looking at that Roman soldier – hmm, let me see that helmet, Gaius – we’ll call that the helmet of salvation; let me get a better look at your sword – ah, that reminds me of the sword of the spirit, the word of God. Paul used his confinement as an opportunity to do in a new way what he had been called to do all along. His circumstances were not a hindrance; they were only a barrier to be crossed, a hurdle to be jumped, a challenge to be accepted.
Some of you will remember Verna Royle, the last surviving charter member of this church. Mrs. Royle lived to the astonishing age of 106. But the last 17 years of her long life she spent in a nursing home bed. You would think that that would have been an intolerable, horrible 17 years. Unacceptable, to be confined to that bed all that time. But do you know what Verna Royle did with those 17 years? She taught Jesus Christ. She taught Jesus Christ to every roommate, every attendant, every nurse, every person who got within earshot of her bed. Was she hindered? She was not. Challenged, yes. Behind a barrier, of course. But not hindered, because she got outside herself and taught others about the one who had made a difference in her life. You can advance in your life, no matter what the barriers are, if you get outside yourself and see even your problems as an opportunity to give Christ to others.
III
Advancing without hindrance. Oh, I want that. I want that for me and I want that for you. I want that for our church. And I believe that it is here. I believe we are advancing. Praise God, advance is here. May I speak with you, just briefly, about your church, and about our advancement?
Last Monday morning I woke up with a concept for this sermon. I had planned the central thrust of the message several weeks ago, as is my custom, but suddenly on Monday morning at 6:30 a.m. I woke up with a key idea rattling around in my mind. I have to believe it came from the Spirit. Normally on Monday mornings I am trying to forget about the sermon blunders of the day before rather than working on the Sunday to come. But this Monday was different.
The thought that came to me was this: that every barrier the early church faced, we too face. Every challenge the earliest Christians faced, we also are looking at. But just as the early church, by the power of the Spirit, overcame every barrier and crossed every hurdle, so also we are overcoming. I believe with all my heart that God has called us to advance His kingdom in this place, and to do it as Paul did it, with boldness and without hindrance. Without hindrance of heart and spirit. Without feeling down about ourselves. Without feeling defeated. We are an unhindered church. Barriers, yes, but we are advancing without hindrance.
a
Think about what I am saying. The early church faced a lot of issues that had never come up before. It might have blown apart on the issue of how to include people who had not been Jews first. Controversy swirled as Peter and James and Paul debated the issue and fought for their perspectives. But what did the church do? It convened a council; it studied the question and resolved it on the basis of God’s word. In other words, the church, stimulated by Paul’s powerful perspective, went for deeper discipleship.
And so have we. And so have we – with new Bible classes and new discipleship groups and support groups and sponsoring Bible studies out in the community. We do not fear the clash of ideas; in fact we encourage it. Some of the most exciting moments I experience come in our Bible classes, where we explore and disagree and prod and push. Deepened discipleship. That is advancing without hindrance.
b
And then the early church faced another crisis when the Jewish widows and the Greek widows each complained that the other was getting more of the goodies. Some of these dear ladies counted the bags of beans and felt that you got a bigger bag than I did. Conflict! But the church did not panic; it simply created a new ministry to attend to those needs. Look at us; we have created new ministries, we have multiplied ministries, in order to serve the needs we see. Human needs do not stop us; they only challenge us. After-school ministry, SHARE, Wednesday Club, Meals-on-Wheels, on and on I could go – the list is in your bulletin. We have not been stopped when somebody presented a need. Instead, like the church of the first century, we have created new ministries to address new needs. We have multiplied ministries, advancing without hindrance.
c
At some point, too, the early church began to struggle with its identity. Was the church going to be a branch of Judaism or was it going to do its own thing? Was the church going to stay confined to the Temple, or would it break out into its own? The Book of Acts tells us that slowly but surely the people of Christ began to gather on the first day of the week, began to gather in houses and in secret places, there to lift up bread and remind themselves of the body of Christ, there to lift up cups and tell one another about the blood of Christ. The people of Christ began to gather by river banks, quiet places but public, and there to plunge new believers into the waters of baptism. They began to worship in a new way. They didn’t have church buildings, they didn’t have pulpits and altars, they didn’t have musical instruments, they had absolutely none of the paraphernalia of worship. No temples, no priests, nothing. But out of their very hearts came a new and winsome expression of their love for God and for Christ. They ran right over the top of the barriers of tradition and they created a whole new worship experience, full of power and of joy.
Today we inaugurate something more in worship for our children. Winsome worship for our youngest. This coming week I hope to offer you something more in our adult worship experience. Slowly but surely, if we trust one another and trust the Spirit, our worship will become more winsome, our worship will become more powerful, more authentic, more, more Jesus! Like the ancient church, winsome worship – free, and without hindrance.
d
And then, finally, I see one more way in which we, as God’s new people at Takoma, advance without hindrance. What do you think of this? “He [Paul] lived there two whole years at his own expense …” Isn’t that interesting … “At his own expense”? Paul paid his own way in prison! He invested himself in his own barrier. That’s why it was no hindrance! He invested himself in it. Imprisonment was not a problem; it was something he could shape, by his own investment! He took what he had and put it to work to make possible all that he felt called to do. That’s what I call “systematic stewardship.” Not just throwing nickels and dimes at problems and hoping they will go away; but a serious, wholehearted, self-sacrificing investment. Systematic stewardship.
Takoma, the day has come when we must make a sacrificial, systematic, wholehearted investment in the church of Jesus Christ. We can no longer play around with a little bit here and a little bit there. If we do that, we will just trip over the hurdles every time. Our budgets have not been adequate witnesses to our faith. Pennies for people in need will not do. Eking out a little for evangelism will not do. Measly morsels for missions will not do. Tips for the Lord will not get it. It is time for God’s people to invest seriously.
Oh, you say, but we have financial issues. We are not a wealthy people. Well, the early church had financial issues, just as we do. There is that frightening story of Ananias and Sapphira, who promised a gift but then reneged on it and died; frightening. There is, however, that inspiring story of the saints in Macedonia, giving all that they could for the poor in Jerusalem, and asking Paul if there wasn’t some way they could give even more! Do not tell me about financial problems. Tell me only what God will do with systematic, sacrificial stewardship.
I am excited! Look at what we are and what we are doing! Deepened discipleship, multiplied ministries, winsome worship, and systematic stewardship. Whatever hurdles we have to jump, we can jump, even with aging legs and tired feet. Whatever barriers we have to cross, we can cross, because we will proclaim the Kingdom of God that we know personally; we will teach Jesus to every human heart and to every human need; and we will invest ourselves with boldness. By the power of Christ, we are advancing without hindrance.
