This morning I invite you to a football game. Thanksgiving Day wasn’t enough! I see the men grinning and I hear the women groaning. What, football, again, even at church?
But imagine this morning a very peculiar football game. On one side you have our Redskins. The Redskins of the last several games, not those imposters who showed up for the first few games. On this side you have Westbrook and Davis and Graham and Arrington and Darrell Green, fleet of foot. Talent galore, ready and raring’ to go, coached by however many Schottenheimers there are on the payroll these days. A formidable array of football talent. That’s one side.
Opposing them on the gridiron is a team you probably have never heard of before. Its players are not on NFL rosters. In fact, they don’t really play much football. They are – or were – government workers, accountants, teachers, and businessmen. If they ever played football at all, and it was on the pickup playing fields of some sandlot, not in the splendor of a stadium. This opposition team is the Takoma Park Baptist Church Pickup Team. And it doesn’t look at all impressive. Its front line looks pretty fragile except for three or four Cosbys that look as though they might stop something. But the rest of the linesmen look fragile – some are sick, some are too old, some are too young, some are more accustomed to pushing pens across paper than pigskins across playing fields. What a motley crew!
In the backfield, well, let’s see. How about Hairston and Mitchell and Townshend and Timmons? Read the numbers on their jerseys: 78, 80, 84. Are those their jersey numbers or their ages?! Now we need a quarterback: how about General Deloatch – he ought to know how to command a team! Although the capacity to command men in battle is not quite the same thing as the ability to mastermind the game. And then there’s the coach, that sorry coach. Wrapped in a robe, adjusting his glasses, and always looking desperately in the playbook to find a game plan that just might work! What do we expect from him? Not too much, I’m afraid.
But here we are, and it’s close to the end of the game. Miraculously, and nobody knows quite how it happened, the game is close. The Redskins, of course, are ahead, but not by as much as you might have thought. Professionals that they are, they look strong, even though they have not yet overwhelmed the church team. Everybody knows that all they have to do is turn on the steam, and it will be over. No problem.
But the church team does have the ball, and it’s fourth down, with only seconds left to play. The only way they can win the game is to keep possession of the ball. If the enemy has it, they can win in a heartbeat. What shall we do? We’ll have to try an onside kick. An onside kick means we have to kick the ball away, just enough to be within the rules, but close enough that our guys can run and get it before theirs do. We need a kicker – let’s see, how about the Assistant Pastor? She can kick the ball, because that’s what we do with Assistant Pastors: we give them the jobs nobody else wants to do! (You say there are no girls on football teams? Hey, every fall Lucy holds the ball for Charley Brown!). So let the Assistant Pastor kick; the ball bounces down the field, and we go racing after it, hoping to get there first …
I’m going to leave the outcome to your imagination. I’m just going to leave you in suspense. That might guarantee that you won’t go to sleep during the rest of this message!
In the long and tortured course of human history, how often it seems that might makes right and that the victory goes to the rich and the powerful! How clear it seems to be that right is forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne! We who are the church, how can we stand against everything thrown against us? Caesar and his legions centuries ago, barbarians in the Dark Ages, Muslims in the Middle Ages, fascists and Nazis and Communists in our own age – who are we against all of that? It would seem impossible that we could take the field and survive.
And yet here we are. And not just those of us in this room, but millions around the world, gathering in churches from tiny grass huts to immense cathedrals. The church of the Lord Jesus Christ has not only survived, but even thinks it is going to win the battle against wealth, power, and the arrogance of evil!
How did all this happen? How can this be? The prophet Isaiah announces God’s strategy. Isaiah speaks of a God who is able to use opposition to his advantage in order to achieve what He wants to achieve. Isaiah says, “Cyrus, king of the Persians, you are chosen of God. You are chosen of God to do what God wants done, even though you yourself do not know God.”
A brief history. You will remember that after Solomon’s reign, the people of God were divided into two Kingdoms, Israel in the north and Judah in the south. Israel lasted for two hundred years, until she fell to the Assyrians in 722 BC. Then the Assyrians themselves were conquered by the Babylonians, who in turn defeated the southern Kingdom of Judah in 587 BC. They took into exile the leaders of Judah, and ruled with an iron hand. No one could see how the purposes of God through His chosen people would be carried out. If there is no nation, God’s purposes are frustrated. If the leadership is imprisoned, God’s purposes are defeated.
But God is never defeated. God always has another way. In the person of Cyrus, king of the Persians, God saw someone who could be the agent of a new beginning. The Persians, led by Cyrus, would defeat the Babylonians and return the people of God to their homeland. Now Cyrus was not a believer; Cyrus was not a Jew, he did not know the Lord, he was not a man of prayer or a person of piety. He was a general and a ruler, period. But, you see, our God has a way, when there seems to be no way, of opening up a new way. He has a way of drafting a new team, out of the most unlikely player personnel. Our God moves forward no matter what the opposition does.
I
How does all this happen? For one thing, God cuts through barriers. God slices through everything that stands in the way of His purposes. God says, through Isaiah,
I will go before you and level the mountains, I will break in pieces the doors of bronze and cut through the bars of iron
God slices through every barrier that stands in the way of His purposes.
Fifteen years ago some of us said that we believed that our church property should be used for Kingdom purposes. Here we are, owners of five houses, and all of them sitting there, drawing modest rents but costing us dearly for insurance and taxes and maintenance. Fifteen years ago we said that something better needed to be done, and that at least one of those houses ought to be used for Kingdom purposes, for missions.
But every year we would add up the numbers and say we couldn’t do it yet. We said we needed the income we were getting from each house. Couldn’t afford to use a house for missions.
About two months ago the chair of our Residential Properties Committee said, “We think we’re about ready. We think we can now use a house for missions purposes. And we even know which house we want to use.” I said, “Well, that’s great, but you know, with the way the landlord-tenant laws are in the District of Columbia, it will be pretty hard to get that tenant out. You cannot easily evict in DC.” But I had not reckoned on a God who slices through the things that stand in the way. Less than two weeks later, the tenants from that house were moving out, on their own, with no push from us; that house is now available.
I believe that when we dedicate ourselves to the purposes of God, God goes before us and slices through barriers. We no longer declare that we are going to use this property for commercial purposes; we declare that we were going to use it for missionary purposes. That makes the difference. God prepared the way for us when we took a step of faith and believed Him.
God will slice away the barriers when we step out to do something that will provide a witness for Him. Now how did all this happen?
I am the LORD, and there is no other; besides me there is no god. I arm you, though you do not know me, so that they may know, from the rising of the sun and from the west, that there is no one besides me; I am the LORD, and there is no other.
II
How does it happen that the Lord gets victory for His church? I ask you again, how does all this happen? God not only cuts through barriers; He also supplies resources. God wants to bless us; He wants His people to flourish. He promises it this way:
I will give you the treasures of darkness and riches hidden in secret places, so that you may know that it is I, the LORD, the God of Israel, who call you by your name.
I will give you treasures and riches in secret places.
You know, money is always an issue in churches. But God has treasures in secret places, waiting for us to discover them. Let me tell you a story about a nearby church. This church nearly went out of business a few years ago. Its situation was desperate. It had built its building when things looked good, but the character of its neighborhood had changed, and many of the people who had started the church left, unwilling to deal with new people and with immigrants. They abandoned their church, and left it with a huge mortgage and a smaller congregation. The time came when it appeared that the bank might foreclose and take the property. Dismal days for that church.
So the call went out for sacrifice. Sacrifice. The people responded. They brought in family heirlooms; they took the rings off their fingers and the silver plate from their dining rooms. They rescued their church, and then they did even more. Not only did this church turn its debt, it also turned around its outreach. They started a Spanish-speaking congregation; then a Chinese congregation; then something else – I believe it is now four different churches meeting in the same facilities. They grew, they prospered, they took on new life. And then they decided they wanted to do something special for worship; they had had just a kind of makeshift organ, but they felt ready now to install a good instrument. So this church, which only a few years before had not been able to pay its bills, called once again for people to give so that they could build an organ. The money came in slowly – but there was enough to start with, and so start they did.
Now building an organ is more than just trucking in a musical instrument and setting it down. They would have to rebuild the whole platform area at the front of the church. So the workmen began to tear it apart, and when they did, they found something very curious. They found a very unBaptist six-pack of beer, unopened and undamaged, that had been hidden under the platform when the building had been built! And guess what? Have you ever seen, “Antiques Road Show”? That six-pack is now a collector’s item, worth hundreds and hundreds of dollars.
God will give us the treasures and riches hidden in secret places so that His name can be glorified! I am confident of our church’s future. I am confident, not because I know of any six-packs under the floor, but because I know that hidden in our wallets and in our bank accounts, in our salaries and in our pensions, secreted in the resources that God has placed in our hands, there is enough. There is enough to be obedient to what God calls us to do. I am not worried about economic downturns, about job insecurity, or anything of the kind. The only thing that would worry me is that some of us will not want to tear up our private agendas to see what God has hidden away for us. But God will give the treasures and riches hidden in secret places to glorify His name. Let’s tear up some of the old cautious ways, let’s step out in faith, let’s allow God to give us what He wants to give us, and it will surprise you how much victory we will see!
How again did all this happen?
I am the LORD, and there is no other; besides me there is no god. I arm you, though you do not know me, so that they may know, from the rising of the sun and from the west, that there is no one besides me; I am the LORD, and there is no other.
III
Once again, how does all this happen? How does God empower His church for victory? It is not only that God slices through the barriers; and it is not only that He supplies the resources; most of all, He gives us our identity. He gives us spiritual stamina. He gives us His own presence. He calls us by His name. He gives us His very self. As long as we acknowledge His lordship and call on His name, victory is certain for the people of God. Isaiah hears the Lord say,
For the sake of my servant Jacob, and Israel my chosen, I call you by your name, I surname you, though you do not know me.
Cyrus, that Persian king, did not know God, but God knew Him, and used Him. Many of us here today can look back to a time when we did not know God, but God used us, God invested in us. God turned us around. Oh, I wish I could tell you all the stories I want to tell you this morning! The stories could be told from the people in this room – what a glory they are!
But this I must say: Henry Blackaby tells us in the “Experiencing God” discipleship course that God places into each church the gifts it needs to carry out His vision for that church. I see God bringing to us exactly the gifts we need to do what needs to be done. Quickly, just a few examples: We have said that we want to minister to the mentally ill, and so God brings us a clinical psychologist and a mental health administrator. We have said that we want to serve prisoners and parolees, and so God brings us a prison chaplain. We have said that we need to enhance our worship life, and so God brings us a music teacher. We have said that we need to do missions, and so God brings us an experienced missionary pastor. We have said that we need to correct the deficiencies in this building, and so God brings us a building contractor.
And, brothers and sisters, those are only the brand new members, this year’s members! I have said nothing about all of you who have been around for a while. God has been at work all along, but now it’s decision time, and a new day is dawning, new possibilities are emerging, and it is our task to let God name us and give us His spirit. Our greatest days are ahead of us! Of that I am confident!
And again I ask, How did all this happen? And again comes the answer,
I am the LORD, and there is no other; besides me there is no god. I arm you, though you do not know me, so that they may know, from the rising of the sun and from the west, that there is no one besides me; I am the LORD, and there is no other.
Our imaginary football game. It is the last moment of the last quarter. The people of God appear to be losing the game. Over there, look at that enemy! Greed and gluttony, arrogance and ambition, pride and prejudice, scorn and selfishness, all of it beefed-up and ready for blood. Over here the church team, some of them tired, some not well trained, each player with his own idea about how the game should be played. After all, it’s a Baptist church, you know, and where there are three Baptists together there are at least four opinions about every question! Just look at them! How can they ever hope to prevail against all that power?
Wait a moment. A timeout has been called. What are they doing down there? It looks like they are going into a huddle! Bowing their heads and mumbling strange words. There’s somebody else we have not reckoned with. We have looked at the strategies and we have examined the players and we have evaluated the coaches. But behind the scenes there is someone else: the owner. The owner. And I tell you, Daniel Snyder has invested his millions, his players are well paid, and his team thoroughly equipped. But the other owner – the cattle on a thousand hills are His. All things are His, and without Him was not anything made that was made. He is able to keep that which has been committed unto Him against any day of difficulty. He is not subject to accident or to terror, He is not struck down by destruction or intimidation. He is Lord of all things.
The team has huddled; it is gathering its players. There isn’t much time. Here it comes … it won’t be long.
How did all this happen?
