Somebody asked me, when I was getting ready to take study leave, “Why are you doing this? Are you going for another degree? Are you preparing to take another job? And did the deacons make you do this?”
Well, I said, I’m taking the study leave because I don’t get much reading time under normal circumstances, and because I think we’ve got to face some issues about ministry here. So no, I don’t need or want another degree; I’m long past the time when more diplomas on the wall would mean anything. And no, I’m not trying to go to any other job .. just trying to do this one better. When I said all these things, he said, “Well, but to study, at your age … ?“. Stop right there. Just hold it. What has age got to do with it? With apologies to Tina Turner, who ought to know, what has age got to do with it?
Actually, the older I get the more I know I need to be rejuvenated. The older I get the more I know what I don’t know. The longer I run the more I become depleted, and need to get filled up again. I wasn’t looking for another degree, I wasn’t going for another job, and the deacons didn’t make me do it. I knew that I needed it. I knew that I needed to be re-instructed, re-energized, and refilled.
Because everything gets depleted, doesn’t it? Everything withers and fades and declines and eventually dies. Everything that looks permanent turns out to be temporary. Anything can be taken away, just like that!
My British wife has had a good time this week watching news coverage on the Queen Mum. One hundred years old, and looking good. I guess it would be unkind of me to say that a lot of us could look good if we had her welfare system going for us! A hundred years old, still doing the job: waving at the crowds. Tough life. Quite a record. But you know what? She may die tomorrow. She will die. She’s been here a long time, but she can be taken away; she will be taken away. Anything can be taken away, just like that!
In this country, we’re heading into election season. This is the 224th year of the American republic. That sounds like a long time. But did you know that in the annals of nations, we are just babies? The Roman Empire lasted more than a thousand years. But where is Rome now? It’s gone, taken away. Crumbled into dust. And the same thing will happen to us. We don’t like to think about it, but it’s true. Some day, some how, this nation will be grist for history’s mill. Things can be around for a long time, but they can be taken away, and often they are.
Just about anything you have can disappear overnight. Yesterday you had a good job, with salary and perks and stock options and a 401K plan. Tomorrow morning, pink slip. What the world gives the world can take away. Yesterday you had a fine reputation, well thought of, leader in the community, pillar of the church. This afternoon, temptation dazzles you; the rumor mill grinds you up; your mistakes multiply, and tomorrow it’s all gone. What the world gives the world can take away.
Would you like to be involved in something real? Would you like to know that your life is invested in something that will be here not just today, not just tomorrow, not just for a hundred years or even a thousand, but for eternity? Would you like to believe that what you are doing will make a permanent difference? I would. I want to believe that. Alfred Lord Tennyson said in his poem “In Memoriam” that we think we were not made to die. We think we were made for eternity.
The trouble is we prop ourselves up with things that will not last for eternity. We prop ourselves up with things that the world provides us, and we forget that what the world gives, the world can take away. Over against that, Peter has some good news for us. Peter says that God has something to give us which is – listen to these three words -- imperishable, undefiled, and unfading.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you .
I want you to focus on those three strong words: imperishable, undefiled, and unfading. Can I get you to say them with me?
Imperishable, undefiled, and unfading. Again .. again.
It was about the year 65 or 66 AD. The setting was the city of Rome. Nero was the Emperor. Selfish, petty, tyrannical, lustful Nero. This Emperor was into spectacles. The bigger the show the better. Hundreds of people in the arena, putting on gladiator fights. Once Nero even flooded the Colosseum, put ships out there, and staged a naval battle. Nero loved a good show. So much so that very probably it was by his orders that the city of Rome was burned. What a spectacular show that was -- watching the so-called Eternal City go up in flames! They even say that he fiddled while Rome burned; he said the fire inspired his artistic muse.
But now when Nero burned the city, he didn’t exactly reckon with the fact that its citizens would not be amused. They didn’t much care for their homes and businesses going up in smoke. They clamored for somebody to be punished. Somebody had to be blamed. Nero blamed the Christians. He pinned the fire on the followers of Jesus. When Nero’s mania reached its peak, the roads leading to the city were lined with burning crosses, on which hung the bodies of Christians. Their lives taken away by a cruel man who wanted to put on a good show.
It was in the middle of that kind of terror, that kind of loss, that a leader among the Roman Christians, this man Peter, wrote our three strong words. And by the way, tradition says that Peter himself was eventually killed by the Emperor, crucified head downward.
But now watch: the enemy could take away a lot of things. They could take away safety and lodging and family; they could even take away life. But there was something no enemy could ever take away, something the world could not destroy. What are Peter’s three words again?
Imperishable, undefiled, and unfading
I
First, imperishable. Something that will not die. Can we have something imperishable?
Peter says that God, by His great mercy, has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. A new birth.
How many times have you wished you could start over? You got into something, and it went so badly, you just wished you could run the clock back and start all over again. I used to try to do most of my own mechanical work. I’d get under the car and take out this piece and that piece to try to fix whatever was wrong. One time I got the entire radiator out in order to replace a water pump! But when I got everything back together and drove the car, the transmission began to slip. The transmission! What’s that got to do with the water pump? Who knew that transmission lines go through the radiator in order to be cooled? I don’t do that stuff any more. I don’t do it not only because I don’t really have time, but also because I get so frustrated. When I do mechanical work, I just wish I had never started. Is there anything in your life like that? You just wish you could start over, because what you are into is going downhill so fast?
Maybe you’re in a relationship that is deteriorating. You stood at the altar once and you said, “Until death us do part.” But now it feels like an emotional death is coming. Don’t you wish you could roll the clock back and start again?
Maybe you took a job that turned out to be all wrong. You got off on the wrong foot and you just cannot make it work. I know cases like that with pastors and churches; they got started wrong and two or three years later everybody is unhappy and the whole thing comes unglued. Everybody wishes it had never happened and that relationships would stay alive, but sometimes they just plain die. And that hurts.
But God gives us a new birth. God offers us a fresh start. He offers new life in Christ. Listen again:
By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
What does that mean? It means that there is one relationship that you can depend on completely. It means that God’s love for us is so strong, so rich, and so free that He raised Jesus Christ from the dead, set Him in eternity, and promised that we in Jesus could have the gift of eternal life. If you really want to find something permanent and solid, begin with the love of God. The love of God that gave Jesus life; the love that wants to give us life. Folks, it’s not a question of how successful you are or how solvent you are or how fine your reputation is. It’s a question of knowing that you are captured by the love of God, that love that will not let you go. It’s a question of knowing that even though you might be assaulted by things present or things to come or principalities and powers or whatever .. whatever the world might throw at you, the eternal God cares for you, God is invested in you, God loves you, and nothing in all creation can ever separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus.
Imperishable. Do not ask what you can do to make yourself imperishable. Ask only to know that whosoever trusts in Him has everlasting, imperishable life. We have a new birth into a living hope. Imperishable.
II
But Peter’s second word, after imperishable, is undefiled. Say it with me: undefiled. What are the three words now? Imperishable, undefiled, unfading.
Undefiled. Are you the sort of person for whom everything has to be perfect or else it’s not any good at all? Do you place unreal demands on yourself and on others .. you ought to be perfect, they ought to get it right?
I have this terrible talent, which has driven crazy every secretary I’ve ever had. I can glance at a page and see immediately the typographical errors. All I have to do is take a quick look, and mistakes jump out at me. And naturally I want the page done over again! I don’t like mistakes! (And yes, I know where the typos are in today’s bulletin!).
Now the issue is that just because there is a flaw in something, that doesn’t mean it’s useless. Just because there is an erroneous comma somewhere doesn’t mean that the information is pointless. But I have allowed my desire for superficial perfection, my worry about what has not been done, to take away my appreciation of what has been done. I have allowed the world’s standards of perfection to take away my joy.
But God gives us something different. God gives us undefiled lives. God transforms our incompleteness. He redeems our imperfections and makes them something beautiful for himself. The joy is in being undefiled; and undefiled doesn’t mean perfect, as the world sees perfection. Undefiled means cleansed, renewed, made whole, restored. Peter says,
for a little while you have had to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith--being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire--may be found to result in praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.
Genuine faith, tested by fire and trials, results in glory. Peter is telling us that life will feel awfully ragged sometimes. But in that raggedness God is at work to refine us and purify us, like fine gold. God will make us undefiled. He will restore us.
A few months ago our sister Vallerie King came and rejoined our church after a number of years away. Maybe you didn’t know it at the time, but she was hurting and wounded. She had been through a mess in another church – and only church folks, especially Baptist church folks, know how to make that much of a mess. She was unemployed, bruised from the battle, disappointed. On top of that, her mother was becoming seriously ill; Vallerie has shared with you that story. In the middle of it all, however, Vallerie King came to one important conclusion – that God was calling her to be the pastor of a local church. Not an assistant pastor, not a staff worker, but the pastor, the person in the pulpit Sunday by Sunday, baptizing and marrying and burying – in the trade we call it hatch, match, and dispatch! The pastor! And since she had made the mistake, unforgivable to some, of being born female, getting a church to believe in her call was not going to be easy. But look what has happened, just look at this messy, incomplete, imperfect, not by-the-book story: Sister Vallerie was freed up with time, undefiled time, to care for her dying mother; she was right here, free and ready, when we needed some help on our staff; and now her call, her pastorate, her gift! Who but God could orchestrate such a beautiful, redemptive thing? Who but God would take these fragments and disappointments and imperfections and weave them into something whole and undefiled? We may be on trial, but trials purify us and make us whole. Praise God! Undefiled.
You may not be all that you once were or all that you want to be, but when you let Christ go to work in your life, He will make the wounded whole; He will set the captive free. You will be restored and undefiled.
III
Imperishable, undefiled, and unfading. What’s the last word? Unfading. Imperishable, undefiled, and unfading. Say those three strong words with me again: imperishable, undefiled, and unfading.
Unfading. Things dim. Bright colors fade. Fine metal tarnishes. Eyes dim. Minds get numb. Bodies get tired. Beauty dries up. The physicist’s law of entropy tells us that unless you keep putting energy into something, it will run down. There is no such thing as a perpetual motion machine that runs on its own and doesn’t need an energy source. Everything fades. I have a boyhood memory of General MacArthur’s emotional farewell, “Old soldiers never die, they just fade away.” Nothing stays fresh, does it? Or does it? Or does it?
For I am here this morning, standing before the Table of the Lord, to remind you that because He lives, we too may live. I am here to remind you that there is a positive answer to Job’s plaintive question, “If a man die, shall he live again?”
I am standing before the Table of the Lord to remind you that the grass withers, the flower fades, but the word and promise of our God stand good forever. We put flowers here before the altar. But they are cut flowers, and by the time the service is over, they are already fading. The intensity of their color is less and the strength of their aroma is weak. Fading. But if we put live flowers here .. if we bring them still rooted in the soil, watered and cared for, they live and flourish, unfading and lovely. So it is with you and me. Peter so boldly says it:
Although you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.
You love him; you believe and you rejoice. You are in Him. He says that if anyone abides in Him, is rooted in Him, His words abide in us, and we live. We are receiving, right now, our gift of salvation. Unfading, fresh, vital, an indescribable and glorious joy!
If you are dying, believe and know that you will live again, unfading.
If you are desperate and depressed, believe in His love and know that He will protect you. Indescribable, unfading joy.
If you are afraid because you’ve lost your job, your home is in shambles, or your life is out of control, take heart! Take heart! What the world gave the world can take away. But there is so much more than that!
If you are confused, let this mind be in you, which was in Christ Jesus, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame. Unfading joy.
This joy that we have; it’s an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading. It’s what? It’s --
Imperishable, undefiled, and unfading.
This joy that we have – can the world take it away? No, because the world didn’t give it and the world can’t take it away.
This hope that we have – can the world take it away? No, because the world didn’t give it and the world can’t take it away.
This very life that I have – can the world take me away? No, because the world didn’t give life and the world can’t take life and hope and joy away.
Praise God; the Table reminds us that we have an inheritance that is what? Imperishable, undefiled, and unfading.
