A DOOR TO ANOTHER WORLD
Our Music Minister, Mo and our Sunday School director, Steve, were passengers on a jet crossing the Atlantic.
The pilot came on the intercom to report trouble with engine number one that had to be shut down. The flight would last an hour longer, but there was no cause for alarm.
After a while, the pilot reported an oil leak on engine number four. Absolutely no cause for anxiety as a jumbo can fly on the two remaining, but there would be a further delay in their arrival. Some concern rippled round the passengers.
Sure enough, the pilot later reports a fuel feed problem on engine number three.
Mo turns to Steve and says: ‘Do you know what I’m thinking Steve?"
‘No, what’s that you’re thinking, Mo?’
‘Well. I’m thinking that if that other engine goes, we’ll be up here all cotton pickin’ night’.
ILLUS> When I was about seven my grandmother took me to visit a cousin that I hadn’t met before. That cousin introduced me to a world that I have never forgotten. He introduced me to the wonderful world of comic books.
He took me down into his basement where he had thousands upon thousands of comic books. We laid and read for hours, with each book taking me on a different adventure with different characters facing, and conquering different obstacles.
As we left that day he handed me a box full of comic books that would serve as a foundation for my own collection, which took me on countless adventures.
C.S. Lewis has done the same thing with his awesome fantasy, ‘The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe’. He takes us into a world where there are adventures and challenges that teach us that even Christians still have to face obstacles. In a few weeks there will be a major motion picture opening across the nation. Disney will be spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on advertising. I believe that as Christians we should take advantage of their largesse and use the opportunities that this movie provides to share our faith at work, at school and in our neighborhoods.
OPEN by explaining the basic plot of the movie. Then read the couple of pages dealing with Lucy’s first trip through the wardrobe. Explain how the wardrobe was a door not only to another world, but it was a door to adventure!
After dealing with the wardrobe as the entry point to lives filled with great adventures, ask people to turn to John 10:1-10 and join in reading:
John 10:1“Most assuredly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door, but climbs up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber. 2But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. 3To him the doorkeeper opens, and the sheep hear his voice; and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. 4And when he brings out his own sheep, he goes before them; and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. 5Yet they will by no means follow a stranger, but will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers.” 6Jesus used this illustration, but they did not understand the things which He spoke to them.
7Then Jesus said to them again, “Most assuredly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. 8All who ever came £before Me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them. 9I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture. 10The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.
Now Jesus was speaking to people who understood their sheep and what it took to raise them. He first used an illustration about sheep that were kept in cities and villages. They were normally kept in a large pen, or sheepfold, where a number of shepherds would bring their flocks for the night. Someone from the village would be assigned to watch the sheep for the evening and then in the morning the shepherds would come to gather their sheep. The sheep knew the sound of their individual shepherds voice and would only respond to him.
In the country shepherds would build their own sheepfold or pen. They would use thorn bushes, branches or stones to build these temporary pens. Then after their sheep entered the fold, they would set themselves across the opening and he would literally become the door to the sheepfold.
I believe Jesus refers to both of these in this text for two distinct reasons. First, Jesus was trying to expose the false teaching of the Pharisees while secondly, He is introducing Himself as the truth of God.
As a door, Christ is the only way to enter into the Kingdom. Jesus Himself said in John 14: 6Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. These are not very popular words in this day and time but people really need to consider who said them. I am amazed at how many people are willing to talk about how wonderful Jesus is but then they ignore His words.
In His statement in verse 10, Jesus uses two very important words, zoe [zwh] and perissos [Perissos]. Zoe is a word that refers to the highest quality of life available. It’s not just life, but great life, overflowing life, abundant life. The word perissos, means super abundant.
What Jesus is telling us here is that He came that we might have super abundant, over flowing life! He is the door to a not just new life, but rather, He is the door to a super abundant life. That is His intent for His sheep, for His children.
Are you living a super abundant life? Are you even living an abundant life?
How You Spend Your Time
In an average lifetime, the average American spends:
3 years in business meetings
13 years watching TV
$89,281 on food
Consumes 109,354 pounds of food
Makes 1811 trips to McDonalds
Spends $6881 in vending machines
Eats 35,138 cookies and 1483 pounds of candy
Catches 304 colds
Is involved in 6 motor vehicle accidents,
Is hospitalized 8 times (men) or 12 times (women)
Spends 24 years sleeping.
Unfortunately, many Christians never wake up! They get their fire insurance paid up and then they fall into a deep spiritual coma.
Some reports indicate that boredom comes as much from overstimulation as it does from understimulation. In our day, we are in danger of entertaining ourselves to death! In the church we are constantly chasing after ‘the next’. We are looking for the next spiritual wave, the next growth tool, the next…..fill in your own blank. We get so overwhelmed with what others are doing we forget to seek out that individual adventure that Christ has for us, both as individuals and as a body.
Theodore Roosevelt said that ‘We have got but one life here…It pays, no matter what comes after it, to try and do things, to accomplish things in this life, and not merely to have a soft and pleasant time.’ God said in Genesis 46:3 NIV "I am God, the God of your father," he said. "Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for I will make you into a great nation there."
Many Christians today spend their lives wishing that it was 1955. They want to go back to the days as they used to be. God says that He has a plan and a place for each one of us. Don’t regret the time that God has placed you in. Instead ask Him what He wants to do in you and through you!
You all are blessed to be living when you’re living. In an editorial for On Mission, Blackaby wrote, "However, this is our greatest hour as Christians. The world’s values have failed, and many know this well-with great brokenness and pain! People are searching for what is true, stable real and safe." He continued, "People sense a spiritual vacuum in their lives, and they know the world does not have real and certain answers for them." This is not a time for the church to be fearful, but for us to be faithful and fill the vacuum for truth left in an age when people no longer believe in absolute truth. This is a time for us to live our Christian lives as adventurers.
Just as Lucy stepped through the wardrobe to a life of adventure, we need to step out in faith and ask God to use us in amazing ways.
Irwin McManus in his awesome book ‘The Barbarian Way’ speaks of rhinos and their limitations. ‘But my favorite of all is the group designation for rhinos. You see, rhinos can run thirty miles an hour, which is pretty fast when you consider how much weight they’re pulling. They’re actually faster than squirrels, which can run up to twenty-six miles an hour. And even then who’s going to live in dread of a charging squirrel! (Sorry—that was a bit off the point.) Running at thirty miles an hour is faster than a used Pinto will go. Just one problem with this phenomenon. Rhinos can see only thirty feet in front of them. Can you imagine something that large moving in concert as a group, plowing ahead at thirty miles an hour with no idea what’s at thirty-one feet? You would think that they would be far too timid to pick up full steam, that their inability to see far enough ahead would paralyze them to immobility. But with that horn pointing the way, rhinos run forward full steam ahead without apprehension, which leads us to their name.
Rhinos moving together at full speed are known as a crash. Even when they’re just hanging around enjoying the watershed, they’re called a crash because of their potential. You’ve got to love that. I think that’s what we’re supposed to be. That’s what happens when we become barbarians and shake free of domestication and civility. The church becomes a crash. We become an unstoppable force. We don’t have to pretend we know the future. Who cares that we can see only thirty feet ahead? Whatever’s at thirty-one feet needs to care that we’re coming and better get out of the way.
We may not be able to see what’s at thirty-one feet, but we don’t have to be blind to what’s right in front of us. There’s a world that desperately needs God, a world filled with loneliness, hopelessness, and fear. We have somehow become deaf to a cry that reaches heaven coming from the souls of men. But God hears.’
We need to be like a crash of rhinos, racing ahead as God leads. Don’t worry about all the details, but trust Him to guide and then provide!!!
Let’s step through the wardrobe and never settle for just standing by the lamp wondering what’s beyond.
Roy (Butch) Vernon
Thoroughbred Community Church
www.thoroughbredchurch.com
