To Build a Fire
September 2, 2001
Read John 1:35-39a and 2 Tim. 4:5
I want to bring an exhortation on evangelism today, but rather than stress our responsibility to evangelize, I want to do it by thinking deeply about the nature of man. When it comes down to “doing the work of an evangelist” I know three things: 1) I’m not very good at it, 2) I need Jesus to help me, 3) that like Jesus, I need to not only look, but to really see men, that is, perceive and understand the deep longings in men who are without God … in short … “what are they seeking?” This past Christmas I asked God to help me in the area of evangelism. I first read John Wimber’s Power Evangelism. Then I had a great and unexpected time witnessing to a dear friend. More recently, I went to Honduras and saw many come to Christ through our youth, and this week I completed the book, Can Man Live Without God by Ravi Zacharias. Ravi Zacharias grew up a Hindu in India, converted to Christianity, and is now one of the best minds actively defending our faith. His work especially helped me with reality #3: the need to better discern men, and what men without God are seeking.
I want to use a metaphor this morning that is captured in a phrase of Mark 8 after a blind man is partially healed by Jesus … The man said, “I am seeing men like trees, walking about.” My mind seized upon that statement, because believe it or not I have been thinking about how much the layers of wood in a tree trunk resemble or model the nature of man - the outer bark, the middle layer of sapwood, and the inner heartwood.
Do you remember the story by Jack London, To Build a Fire? A man is making his way across the Yukon in 108o below zero weather, he falls through some ice, and he’s freezing . . . He builds a fire which will save his life only to have a bough, heavy with snow, drop its load on his fire and kill it. His hope is gone, and he slowly freezes to death . . . I’ve built fires in sub-zero weather, and I’ve built fires in burned-over timber, and after you get that first small blaze going the secret is the same - you’ve got to split the wood and get to the core of it - to what’s called the heartwood, which is dry and hard and really ready to burn.
When I was 17 a man built a fire that saved my life . . . he was a hitchhiker . . . a French Canadian I had picked up on my way to the mountains of Alberta, Canada. Gaston Caron was his name, and around that fire in the morning hours, he asked a question of us all, that split me down to my heartwood . . . He asked, “What is the most important thing in your life? . . . One man said “playing drums”, another said “his family”, I don’t remember what I said, but at the end Gaston said the most important thing in life to him, was Jesus Christ, and being in relationship to Him! Later in the day, that question drove me to my knees as I was alone in the mountains, where I received Jesus Christ at my Lord and Savior! I felt Him come in, cleanse me and deliver me from all of my sins! I was born anew! A fire for God had been ignited in me!
Jesus asked the same question in another way of those following Him one day … He turned and said to them, “What do you seek?” They gave some lame answer about wanting to know where He was staying . . . (John 1:38) but I suspect that His question stood alone and haunted them and reverberated through the hollows of their souls and demanded the deepest attention of their minds.
I want to propose this morning that evangelism is like building a fire . . . and that to be effective we must go beyond the barky surface of a man or woman . . . we must go into the middle layer where he really lives, and then ultimately into the heartwood, where the deep yearnings for God that God Himself has placed there, will be ignited!!! Will you join me for a few moments in league with the blind man, who said, “I see men, but I am seeing them like trees, walking about . . . “
When you look at a person, you first see what might be called the bark, or the surface elements of their life … their profession, their family, their culture, where they live, what they enjoy - they might be rich, appear happy, or they might be struggling financially, or in the midst of a tragedy . . . you might sense their values, their mood whether they’re patient, harsh, gentle, desperate, simple or sophisticated . . . laid back or intense, brooding or optimistic. Maybe you see tall and full branches, some good fruit and some scars - maybe you see some of those very tough knots over the scars, called musclewood - like a very tough callous over an old wound.
But like Jesus, who the Scriptures say looked at a rich young ruler and “felt a love for him,” and was “a friend of sinners”, you want to go deeper - to where this person really lives . . . so . . . now, you’re pressing into the second layer - what is called the sapwood - where the water and nutrients flow - where for better or worse, men really live . . . What do we find there?
In the 1900s there were a group of thinkers and philosophers called existentialists, who believed that each man is alone in the universe, that God (even if He does exist) does not reveal to men the meaning of their lives, that each personality starts with nothing pre-determined and each person is simply an amalgam of his own decisions . . . through his life. He is completely responsible for the consequences of his actions even though there is no universal moral code. There is no moral code, or essential self to be discovered. Well describing the attitude of the existentialist, Bertrand Russell’s “summation was that the only sensible posture of life was one of unyielding despair and that any other attitude other than despair was merely a seduction of the mind.” (p. 70 of Can Man) Ravi Zacharias tells of his attempt to console the wife of a successful, loved, reputed and envied professional man who committed suicide in his own kitchen in the middle of the night . . . Zacharias said to her . . .
“For many in our high-paced world, despair is not a moment; it is a way of life. Momentary lapses into disconsolation or even purposelessness are not uncommon, and we all at some time experience these moments. But the resigned posture that deems life to be completely devoid of ultimate purpose and bereft of meaning . . . [also still] doggedly haunts the modern mind . . . “ p.71 Ibid.
For the man without God, there is an existential despair in the sapwood of his soul…. This is the message of the book of Ecclesiastes . . . “Vanity of vanities - all is vanity and a striving after wind!!!” For the man without God there is an existential emptiness. D.H. Lawrence writes of it . . . (p. 69 of Can Man)
“We want to delude ourselves that of the problem of our emptiness, love is at the root. I want to say to you, it isn’t. Love is only the branches. The root goes beyond love. A naked kind of isolation. An isolated me that does not meet and mingle and never can. It is true what I say. There is a beyond in you and a beyond in me which goes further than love, beyond the scope of stars. Just as some stars are beyond the scope of our vision, so our own search goes beyond the scope of love. At least, I think that it is at the root, going beyond love itself.”
For the man without God, there is an existential loneliness . . . Thomas Wolfe writes . . . (p. 69 of Can Man)
“The whole conviction of my life now rests upon the belief that the sense of loneliness, far from being a rare and curious phenomenon peculiar to myself and to a few other solitary people, is the central and inevitable fact of human existence. All this hideous doubt, despair, and dark confusion of the soul a lonely person must know, for he is united to no image save that which he creates himself. He is bolstered by no other knowledge save that which he can gather for himself with the vision of his own eyes and brain. He is sustained and cheered and aided by no party. He is given comfort by no creed. He has no faith in him except his own and often that faith deserts him leaving him shaken and filled with impotence. Then it seems to him that his life has come to nothing. That he is ruined, lost, and broken past redemption and that morning, that bright and shining morning with its promise of new beginnings, will never come upon the earth again as it did once.”
For the man without God, there is an existential meaninglessness . . . In this book entitled Nausea by Jean Paul Sarte, Roquentin the historian “rejects concepts of a cosmic purpose . . . as illusion, [and] he is horrified by the absurdity of human life and the ugliness of its pretenses.” “Roquentin records the process of his “nausea”, a violent feeling of disgust inspired by the fact [that] people cannot help existing, and yet there is absolutely no reason for existing.’” (p. 721 Benet’s)
Some of us may want to write these sentiments off as the ramblings of some chronically depressed people, but wouldn’t it be more true to affirm that this is, in fact, the dark state of things for people who are without God? Isn’t it a fact that there is a deep and knowing emptiness, loneliness, and meaninglessness in us all - what Christian writers have called that “God-shaped vacuum” or “hole in the soul” that only He can fill? Perhaps the existentialists sense what Eph. 2:1 says - That man without God is not just sick, but dead already! Have you ever despaired over the commonness of this life? Ever been in a room full of people, and known you are in reality totally alone? Ever been convinced the one who loves you the most doesn’t know you at all? Have you ever said to God, “Lord, please take me - I can’t stand any more of this world?”
No, these existential realities are real and so terrifying, men chase power, popularity, prestige and pleasure to distract themselves . . . The things of this world - what Chuck Farah has called the “3 Gs” - gold, glory, girls . . . We become insatiable in our appetites -
While preparing this message I drove up behind a car with a license plate that said NVRENUF or Never Enough …. Lee Iacocca in his book Straight Talk said this . . .
“Here I am in the twilight of my life, still wondering what it’s all about … I can tell you this; fame and fortune is for the birds….”
Jack Higgins, renowned author of The Eagle Has Landed … “When you get to the top, there’s nothing there.” (p. 56)
I, for one, am not put off by the existentialists and their writings - in fact the opposite is true - I’m grateful for how forcefully they have depicted the horrible bankruptcy of life without God … and it gives me greater compassion for men as they strive to run from and distract themselves from such a horror, and it drives me to God… Perhaps this existential pain is part of what Christ felt on the cross, when He cried out “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Perhaps this existential pain is the tiniest sliver of the ambiance of hell.
It’s time now to go into the deepest layer of man’s longings - the heartwood. Until now, the fire’s been a little smoky … But Jesus shows us the way. In a discussion with the Scribes about marriage, they ask about Moses allowing a certificate of divorce. Jesus responds by reaching way back to creation, and affirming the original intention of God. Contrary to the existentialists… is there an essential self in each one of us? Are there some things at our very center, fashioned by the hand of God? You, see, man has some longings - some upright and Godly longings as his very core, that are even deeper than the clamoring of our existential despair … for example, the restoration of the image of God … I’m opposed to any gospel presentation that starts with man is a sinner - No! - The first point is always that man was made in the image of God - with dignity and as the pinnacle of His creation … and then we sinned … Zacharias highlights another Godly longing that he called “the search for wonder” … He writes powerfully that it is precisely the unabashed wonder in children that makes them so profoundly loved by even the toughest adults and across cultures. Here’s another way to get at his point … “Do you believe the message of Ecclesiastes that there is nothing new under the sun?” If you really do, then “God alone is the [only] novelty …” (p.117) only in the Ancient of Days is there perpetual newness … And how about the “ache for the truth” … in the heart of an honest seeker? Have you ever felt so surrounded by lies that you just ached for the Truth? To Thomas the doubter, Jesus said “I am the Truth …” And then the need to worship! Though most modern men would never recognize this, Zacharias says, “D.H. Lawrence was right when he said the deepest hunger of the human heart goes beyond love - Jesus called that [thing beyond love] - worship.” (p.112)
Others could be mentioned … The need for forgiveness from the guilt of our sin … the need for genuine and abiding rest for our souls, and the longing for an afterlife of security and happiness which Ecc 3:11 so boldly talks about … “God has set eternity in their hearts …” these are the deepest longings of the human heart - the longings set there by our loving Creator. How unfathomable and profoundly wonderful that God has provided for us that all these longings should be met through His only Son, Jesus Christ! Zacharias writes:
“[Only] in Christ is loneliness conquered as the hungers of the human heart are met and the struggles of the intellect are answered.” (p.112)
Jesus said, “I have come that you may have life, and that you may have it more abundantly.”
In this metaphor, I have said that we must not just look, but really see the bark, the existential sapwood, and the God-infested heartwood of man … Ecclesiastes says it very powerfully in chapter 7, verse 9 … It says:
“Behold I have found only this, that God made men upright, but they have sought out many devices.”
Augustine also said it well …
“You have made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee.”
Whether we see a man or woman without God as “burned-over timber”, or so cold to the Lord, as to be frozen - let’s remember the sapwood - let’s go for the heartwood - let’s stoke the fires of evangelism - let’s be the ones “To Build A Fire” … for God has said …
“We are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were entreating through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ be reconciled to God …” 2 Cor. 5:20
Prayer
Any who want to say “God, I must have you in my life…” for the first time
Any who are also seeking God to help them in this area of evangelism …
