The other day, my son was visiting his fiancee, and heard a noise outside. It sounded a bit like thunder. So he went out to investigate. There he found a mess. The fellow who lives across the parking lot from Jackie had come home after an evening of “celebrating”, and was driving, if you call it that, through that small parking lot. It was not a pretty sight. He had already sideswiped two drivers out on the road, and now he was banging away at everything in sight. As my son watched – “Bang”, this driver hit a car on the left. So he steered away from that one, and next, “Bang,” he hit a car on the right – this one was Jackie’s sister’s car. And as Bryan stood there in horror, guess who the next two victims were? “Bang”, Jackie’s car. And, you are way ahead of me, “Bang“, Bryan’s car. I’m not sure what kind of Abrams Tank this fellow was driving, but he didn’t stop until he had damaged about eight cars.
Now it’s bad enough when somebody hits your car, but it feels a whole lot worse when your car is new and has never had a scratch on it. It just somehow feels different when that factory sheen is dented and that proud perfection has been compromised. So guess who had not too long ago bought a new car? Jackie, my almost-daughter-in-law. Guess who else had not too long ago bought a new car? My son Bryan, a pristine SUV. Seems they listened to that part of the marriage counseling that says that when you get married, you need three things, a doctor, a plumber, and a mechanic, or else you are going to have a fight! They wanted to get off to a good start in their marriage, and so new dependable cars. Beautiful things.
But after that night, those cars don’t look so new anymore, do they? They aren’t perfect any longer. They run, but they are not what they used to be. They are not the seamless perfection turned out by the manufacturer. They are now damaged goods. They are a disappointment. And all because of one man. One man turned loose on a suburban street, with too much power and too little sense. One man. The power of one.
It should not surprise us, however, that one person can have so much power for damage. Only a year ago the statues of Saddam Hussein came tumbling down in Iraq. Here was one strong-willed, unspeakably cruel man, who terrorized his own people. One person, the power of one, for evil. It should not surprise us.
It should never surprise us, one person’s power for destruction. A few months ago, domestic diva Martha Stewart pulled off an insider trading deal, and in the aftermath has just about brought down the company she had built with such perfection. The power of one. Martha, it’s not a good thing.
On September 11, terrorists slammed airplanes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and thousands of lives were lost. It may have taken teamwork to pull this off, but the evidence points to one mastermind behind it. Osama bin Laden. The power of one, for evil.
And we could go on and on. One man pulled the trigger and killed John Kennedy; another, took out Robert Kennedy; and still another, one man, pointed his rifle at the balcony of the Lorraine and blasted away the life of Dr. King. The power of one person for evil is very clear.
But, on the other side of the ledger, have you ever heard it said, "The world has yet to see what God can do with and for and through and in [one person] who is fully and wholly consecrated to Him?" In the midst of all the destruction that one crazed character can do, is the other side of the equation true as well? Is it possible that one person has real power for good? Is it conceivable that one person, just one, acting alone, can make a positive difference?
"The world has yet to see what God can do with and for and through and in [one person] who is fully and wholly consecrated to Him." One person? The proverbial drop in the bucket? How could that be?
In his letter to the church at Rome, Paul reminds us of the power of one. The power of one for evil, he said, is demonstrated by the disobedience of Adam. Adam disobeyed God and broke fellowship. Adam, made in the image of God and after His likeness, disobeyed and was not perfect any more. Like my son’s car bumper, he was now damaged goods – no changing that. Our perfection has been broken, our innocence lost, our beauty diminished, our facade shattered. We are not the same.
You’ve seen this happen in small children. So beautiful and innocent, so lovely. But somewhere in the terrible twos or the threatening threes, the time comes when they learn that all-purpose word, “No”, and they defy you and disobey you. From that moment on, their innocence is lost and their perfection is gone. They just won’t be the same any more. The power of one thing, done in one moment, by one person, messes up everything.
Now Paul says that by this one man – by this act of disobedience, which every last one of us repeats – by this one came death. We have damaged what God has given us. We use our powers for evil and hostility, and ultimately for death. That’s a given.
But then Paul goes on to proclaim that just as by that one, sin and death came into the world, so now by the power of another one, Jesus, there is a whole new world. There are new possibilities and new hopes. All from the power of this one.
May I show you some of the things this Jesus can do, exercising the power of one person fully consecrated to God?
I
First, notice that Jesus, using the power of one – Jesus, dedicated wholly to God’s purposes – Jesus is a reconciler. He is a righteousness builder. Jesus teaches us how to live. Paul says that just as one man’s disobedience placed all [of us] under the threat of condemnation, [now] one man’s obedience has the power to present [us] all righteous before God. Jesus, by the power of His example and the force of His life, teaches us how to live. This one man, wholly dedicated to God’s purposes, teaches us righteousness.
I challenge you to find for me any body of teaching that is more influential than this Bible. It is unique in all the world’s great literature. It has reached into every corner of the globe. And within this Bible there is nothing more powerful than those pages that report the teachings of Jesus. Over and over again, He has changed the course of history, wherever men and women have heard His word.
In the earliest days of the church, Peter, damaged by spiritual snobbery, hears the word of Jesus, saying, “Do not call unclean what I have called clean”, and quickly casts off his snobbery and his racism. A few centuries later, a dissolute young north African, Augustine, having made a mess of his life, listens as a child implores him, “Take the Bible and read it”. And Augustine, listening to Jesus speak about purity of heart, is cut to the quick, and becomes one of the greatest minds the Christian movement has known. Go down through the centuries, and you will discover that when people really hear the teachings of Jesus, this word made flesh, they are empowered. They are empowered, and they themselves become powers of one, making a difference.
Shall I tell you of William Carey, who heard Jesus’ word about going into all the world to preach the gospel, and so went to India to labor for years and years? Shall I fast-forward to Gandhi, who, though not a Christian believer, understood that Jesus taught us not to lay violent hands on one another, and so led a non-violent revolution? Or shall I take you to Nelson Mandela and to Desmond Tutu, who waded into one of the most intensely evil systems this world has known, armed only with the word of Jesus, “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, pray for those who despitefully use you?” The power of one. Empowering other ones. The power of one, teaching righteousness.
Shall I go on? Shall I list Harriett Tubman, the deliverer of her people? Or Martin Luther, who turned both church and world upside down, because he understood that we are to love the Lord our God with heart and soul and mind and strength? Or his namesake Martin Luther King, who heard this Jesus insist that we are to love our neighbors as ourselves? Oh, the list is long. Over and over again, the power of this one man’s teaching, showing us how to live. And thus empowering those who hear Him to live by the power of one. Just one.
II
But now, consider this: even if we do listen to Jesus the teacher, we don’t always obey, do we? That old Adam, that old disobedience, is very strong within us. Just knowing what Jesus has said does not guarantee that we will do it. There is too much in us that refuses to change, there is so much that won’t give up on the old ways. We are kind of like the little boy who walked into his grandmother’s house one day, and before she had a chance to say hello or anything, he just announced, “No, Grandma, I won’t”. I won’t what? It didn’t matter. The child was bent on defiance and dead set on disobedience.
And so are we. So are we. We are a mess, and we know it. But again, I want to tell you of the power of one. I want to tell of the power of the one who, as Paul tells us, brings grace. The one who brings forgiveness.
You see, the single thing we need more than any other is grace. The one thing we must have is forgiveness. Nothing else will do, because our fundamental human problem is guilt and shame. We are held back because we feel guilty. We are less than what we could be because we are ashamed. Sometimes it is because of what we have done. Sometimes it is because somebody has told us we’re no good. Whatever it is, we need to be right within our own souls. Yet, try as we may, we cannot get it right for ourselves. Forgiveness has to come from somewhere else. Somebody has to deal with our guilt and our shame.
Now would you agree with this? Before I can forgive myself, I have to know that whoever I have offended forgives me. I can’t feel right about myself, until I know that whoever I have hurt has let go of that hurt. There are no substitutes for that one person who can free me from my guilt.
Not long ago someone came to me and confessed that she had avoided me for several years. She had just stayed away from me, and guess what? I had stayed away from her too. We had had a mutual avoidance society. The reason was that nearly twenty years ago she had spread some stories about me, stories that she knew to be false. She had eventually figured out that our distance went back to that twenty-year-old sin. Then she told me something that I could hardly believe – she told me that every time she saw me, even at a distance, she could see the hurt in my eyes. She knew she had to seek my forgiveness to empower herself and to empower me too! Isn’t that amazing? The power of one person to hurt; the power of one person to forgive. Now I cannot pretend to forgive like Jesus forgives. I have not gone to a cross. But I can tell you that that one word of forgiveness I was privileged to offer – that one word freed her, it freed me, it was a moment of grace. It was the power of one.
Now can I take you, in your mind’s eye, back to Calvary? Were you there when they crucified my Lord? Oh, I was there all right. I was there. And I expect you were too. I take you back to Calvary, where the powers that be flung the young prince of glory up against an eastern sky, and dared Him to come down if He was so special. I take you back to Calvary, where one man died alone – for no matter how much you are surrounded, when you die a criminal’s death, you die alone, you die desolate, you die even wondering whether God Himself has abandoned you – I take you back to Calvary, where one man died for us to offer us forgiveness. One man spilled His blood to bring us salvation.
And so, upon that cross of Jesus, mine eye at times can see the very dying form of one who suffered there for me. And from my smitten heart, with tears, two wonders I confess, the wonders of His selfless love, and my unworthiness. This one has done for us what we cannot do for ourselves, and when He offers us His amazing grace, He empowers us. He sets us free. And thanks be to God, then we can set others free. The power of one.
III
But we are not yet done. For the human condition is not yet resolved. It is not only that we need to be taught how to live. And it is not only that we need to be forgiven because we disobey what we have been taught. The bottom line is that we need life. We need to know that we matter. We need to sense that our lives have some kind of meaning. We need this. We cannot live with the notion that we are like Roman candles that burn for a moment and are forgotten. Our most awesome reality is the knowledge that we shall die. This knowledge colors everything. This fact takes over. For centuries men and women have struggled with this inescapable thing and have wondered whether there would ever be an answer.
I have spent a significant part of my ministry standing at the bedsides of dying people. There is nothing glamorous about that, I assure you. There is nothing pretty about it. You feel helpless. You feel that you want to do something, but you cannot. Nothing that would change what is happening in that bed. Not long ago I stood at one such bedside and listened to a distraught young woman cry out for her father and plead, “Won’t somebody please DO something?!” My heart ached for her. But there is a limit to medical science, and there is a limit to our bodies. That dread moment is coming for you and for me. “Won’t somebody please DO something?!” It’s a fair question.
But the answer, brothers and sisters, is that someone has done something! Someone has done something about death. For just as through one man death came into the world, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. In Christ, in whom the powers of death have met their match, shall gain life. In Jesus Christ, teacher and prophet, dying for the sins of us all; in Jesus Christ, risen from the grave, I tell you, by the power of this one, even the last most bitter enemy is defeated. Death has no more dominion over us. The power of one.
Oh, seize on that! Learn that these few years on earth are but a prelude to eternity! When you find out that your life need not end at the grave, you can give themselves to things that matter. When you discover that your years here may be but a foretaste of glory divine, you can live with victory in your heart. When you see that “only one life, ‘twill soon be past, only what you do for Christ will last,” you can live in absolute assurance and in towering triumph!
This one man – this unique Son of God – this Jesus: what has He done that no other could do? He has decisively defeated death itself. He has given us the power of life. Life! Life with meaning! Life eternal!
"The world has yet to see what God can do with and for and through and in [one person] who is fully and wholly consecrated to Him." Could you be that person? Could you be that one? The power of one – what might God do with and for and through and in you? In this room today there is someone in whom God is just waiting to do a work of grace that will astound the world. The power of one.
Someone wrote a few years back: ... all the armies that ever marched, all the navies that were ever built; all the parliaments that ever sat and all the kings that ever reigned, put together, have not affected the life of man upon this earth as powerfully as has that one solitary life.
And if that one solitary life should take over your life, what then? What then? What might you become? What a life! What an eternal life!
Oh, and by the way – my son’s car? His fiancee’s car? Somebody went to work – somebody who knew what he was doing – and burnished that battered metal. It looks whole again. It’s complete. It is a testimony to the power of a master. It is the power of one.
