MELVIN M. NEWLAND
RIDGE CHAPEL, KANSAS, OK
(PowerPoint slides used with this sermon are available at no charge. Just e-mail me at mnewland@sstelco.com with your request - #233.)
This morning I want you to hear the cry of Jeremiah, the O.T. prophet, as he looks at the ruins of the city of Jerusalem. In the book of Lamentations, chapter 1, vs’s 1,8,11-12, he says, “How deserted lies the city, once so full of people! How like a widow is she, who once was great among the nations! She who was queen among the provinces has now become a slave” [1:1].
“Jerusalem has sinned greatly & so has become unclean. All who honored her despise her, for they have seen her nakedness; she herself groans & turns away” [1:8].
“All her people groan as they search for bread; they barter their treasures for food to keep themselves alive. ‘Look, O Lord, & consider, for I am despised. Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by?” [1:11-12a]
Jerusalem had once been a great & crowded city - a testimony to the world of the power & glory of God. In it stood the glorious temple that Solomon had built. And inside its walls families had lived, children had played, & love had been shared. It had been a city of peace & prosperity as God had showered His blessings upon them.
But in 586 B.C. Jerusalem was destroyed, & the scene in the 1st chapter of Lamentations is a scene of destruction. The walls of the city & the homes in which families had lived had all been reduced to rubble - & mixed with the stones were the broken toys of children.
As Jeremiah watched, he saw people passing by the ruins. He was appalled at their reaction, or, rather their lack of reaction. They didn’t seem to care at all. No one seemed to care. They didn’t cry, nor did they laugh. They simply walked on by, showing no emotion or concern at all.
Jeremiah looks at them & cries out, "Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by?" They were absolutely insensitive to it all. But I wonder, just how sensitive are we?
And to find out, maybe we need to take a test - not an I.Q. test, but an S.Q. test - a Sensitivity Quotient test. How sensitive are we today?
ILL. How do you react when you hear about thousands of men, women & children being slaughtered in the Sudan? Does it bother you to hear that nearly one-third of the world’s population will go to bed hungry tonight, & many are dying of starvation?
More importantly, does it bother you to hear that there are millions of people who are lost & dying without ever hearing the good news that Jesus came to save them from their sins? Just how sensitive are we?
PROP. I have a proposition - an important point that I want to make in this sermon, & I hope you’ll listen carefully & remember it. It is this, "If we are children of God - if we claim to follow Jesus - then we must be loving, caring Christians."
I. THERE ARE MANY PEOPLE IN THE WORLD WHO ARE UNCARING
Now, think about what I have just said, & let’s draw some conclusions from it. The first conclusion is this: “There are many people in the world who are uncaring.”
ILL. Some of you may remember, years ago, hearing about a woman who drowned in Lake Michigan. As she was drowning she cried for help, & three able-bodied men heard her cries - but they just stood there & watched her drown.
Well, someone called the rescue squad, & when they drug her lifeless body out of Lake Michigan, they asked these three men, "Why didn’t you help her?" Their response was revealing. They said, "The water was too cold."
All of us here have heard stories recently about people being brutally attacked & left lying in public places, with people actually stepping over the bodies to go on about their business. Yes, there were witnesses. In fact, some were taking pictures of it all on their cell phones while it was happening. But no one tried to help, or even call 911.
So the question isn’t, "How sensitive are we to the needs of others?" The real question is "Why are we so insensitive?" "Why are there so many people who really don’t seem to care anything at all about what happens to others?"
A. I think there are two possible answers to that question.
ILL. Victor Frankel, who was a prisoner of the Nazis during WW 2, wrote about his experiences, & in his book he tells about the emotional stages a prisoner goes through during captivity. He wrote that the final & most awful stage of all is one where the prisoner actually ends up murdering his own emotions.
"Because," says Frankel, "you can only view human suffering so long. If you are sensitive - if you are compassionate - then it hurts. So, finally, when you have seen so much suffering, you kill your own emotions. The result is that you can watch your friend being knocked down & picked up, & knocked down again, & never look the other way & never feel anything."
It becomes a defense mechanism that we use to shield ourselves, because we don’t want to hurt any more.
Maybe our all-pervading coverage of the news of the world has done that to us. Every time we pick up a newspaper - every time we turn on our TV, we hear of more human suffering.
Maybe we have heard too much - maybe we have cried all the tears that we can cry - maybe we have felt all the sympathy that we can feel - until finally, we have murdered our own emotions. And now we can sit there looking at it all & never shed a tear - never show any emotion at all.
Maybe that is the safe place to be - a place where we can’t hurt any more.
B. Then I think many people are insensitive because it costs something to be sensitive - it costs something when you dare to care.
ILL. A prime example is the story of the Good Samaritan which Jesus told. You see, the two men who passed by on the other side met their appointments on time. They had just as much money in their pockets after they saw the man bleeding & near unto death as they had before. They went on their way & it didn’t cost them anything.
But the Samaritan, who dared to stop, found that it cost him a great deal. It cost him time. It cost him possessions because he gave of his oil & of his wine to bind up the man’s wounds. It cost him money because he paid the Innkeeper to care for the man until he was well again. He was late for his next appointment, & probably he was ridiculed because of what he had done.
Yet, he is the only one in the whole story that we call "good." It always costs something, doesn’t it, when you dare to care?
ILL. Dawson Trotman died a few years ago. Maybe some of you have heard of him. He was the founder of the Navigator Program. Trotman was convinced that the hope of the church was for older Christians to take younger Christians under their wings & teach them, mentor them, in much the same way that Jesus taught His disciples.
Trotman died tragically. He died from drowning. Yet he was an expert swimmer. Two girls were drowning in a lake, & he dove in to help them. He was able to rescue one, bringing her safely out of the water. Then he dove back into the murky waters, searching for the second girl - but he never surfaced. Finally, they drug the bottom of the lake & found both bodies.
Time magazine had a write-up about his death & in it they said, "Trotman was always lifting somebody else up."
But it costs something to do that, doesn’t it? Sometimes it may even cost you your life. Jesus said something about that, "Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it." (Matthew 16:25)
SUM. Dawson Trotman cared. But sadly, our first conclusion is that there are many people in the world who really don’t care anything at all about what happens to others.
II. WHENEVER WE ARE UNCARING WE PLAY INTO THE HANDS OF EVIL
My second conclusion is this: “Whenever we are uncaring we play into the hands of evil.”
ILL. C.S. Lewis, in his classic book, “Screwtape Letters,” writes about a conversation between Satan & his nephew, Wormwood, an apprentice devil.
It goes something like this: Satan tells Wormwood, "Now, your task, your assignment, is not to go out & make bad people. I’ll take care of that. I’ll supply the world with an abundant number of evil people to do evil things.
"But what I want you to do is to cause good people to do nothing. That is all you have to do. Just make all of your people comfortable - cause them to be content with things as they are.
“If they ever begin to think seriously about anything of great importance, then get them to think instead about what they are going to eat at their next meal. Cause them to worry about their digestive system.
"Get their attention off of whatever is important & keep them comfortable. You just keep good men doing nothing - I’ll supply the world with evil men."
You know, Wormwood has done a good job, hasn’t he?
ILL. William Wilberforce was a member of the English parliament who vigorously crusaded against slavery in the late 1700’s. In fact, in 1789 he authored & presented a bill before Parliament that would have made it unlawful for Englishmen to sell slaves to the brand new United States of America.
Wilberforce presented his bill twice in Parliament, & it was tabled both times. But on the third occasion he had worked so hard that he was convinced he finally had more than enough votes for his bill to pass.
On the night that it came up for a vote for the third time, a comic opera premiered in London. Twelve members of Parliament who supported Wilberforce’s bill went to the opera instead of Parliament, & at the very time they were applauding the new opera - the vote was taken & the bill was defeated, 74-70, & the slave trade continued.
I wonder how much the history of our nation was affected, how much misery occurred - how many suffered - because 12 men went to the opera instead of taking care of their responsibilities?
And today, as terrible as it is, our greatest threat is not radical Islam. I’m convinced that our greatest threat arises from good men & women who are children of God, but who are insensitive to the needs of others & who do nothing about them. You see, for us to be uncaring is to play into the hands of evil.
III. THERE ARE GOOD AND CARING PEOPLE IN THE WORLD
The third conclusion that I draw is this: And it is a positive one: “There are good & caring people in he world,” & we need to remember that.
ILL. Have you ever heard of Henry Dunant? Henry Dunant was born in 1828 in Switzerland. His parents were very wealthy. He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, so to speak. He could have lived his whole life in lazy luxury.
Yet, Dunant was a kind & caring young man who visited the sick & helped those who were poor. As a young man he established an organization in Switzerland called, "The Young Men’s Christian Union," which was designed to help teen-age boys.
When he became an adult he went into business on his own, & did very well. One day he had an appointment with Napoleon III, whose armies were at war in Italy.
Dunant traveled to Italy to meet with Napoleon III. But on the way he passed the latest battlefield & saw the atrocities of war. He looked at bayonets & guns rusting in the mud.
He saw the bodies of 40,000 soldiers, most of them dead, but some of them still alive. He heard their cries of agony & pain. Some were cursing as they breathed their last breath of life.
Dunant couldn’t turn away from that. He went to the nearest town & persuaded the townspeople to turn the church into a first aid station. He persuaded citizens to help him & they took stretchers & went out into the battlefield & brought the wounded back.
He worked side by side with the doctors for three weeks, with almost no sleep - ministering to the wounded & to their needs.
Dunant finally went home, but he couldn’t forget what he had experienced. So he started writing to this nation & to that - to all the influential people he knew & to others.
Finally, one day in Geneva, Switzerland, to an international gathering, he presented a resolution that we know today as the Geneva Convention, signed by 22 nations, granting immunity to doctors & nurses & ambulances so that they could go out into the battlefields & bring back the wounded & dying without fear of being shot at.
They adopted as their symbol the red cross upon a white background. Today, wherever there are floods, wherever there are tornadoes, wherever there is war - there is the Red Cross.
You knew about the Red Cross, but did you know that it all started because Henry Dunant could not turn his back on the misery that he saw? He couldn’t pass by without trying to do something about it.
SUM. My point is this: "If we are children of God - if we claim to follow Jesus then when we see a need we will do something. We must be loving, caring Christians."
And when someone says, "Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by?" We, as Christians, will respond, "It is something to me. I care because He cares for me. I love, because He first loved me."
INVITATION:
