This Is The Day

Sermon for 8/4/96

“Seize the Day!”

HoHum:

B. The movie “Dead Poet’s Society”

1. Gather ye rose buds while ye may, the old time is still aflying, and this same flower which smiles today, tomorrow will be dying.

2. Carpe Diem, Seize the Day!

3. The human race is filled with passion. Poetry, beauty, romance, love these are what we stay alive for.

4. Sucking the marrow out of life.

5. Strive to find our own voice- Most men lead lives of quiet desperation.

6. The powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?

WBTU:

** Are these Biblical concepts?

A. Eat, drink, be merry, for tomorrow we die.

B. Bible commands us to do what we can today.

D. Today is the first day of the rest of your life.

E. Two traps:

1. Older people- Yesterdays- we look back. Do not live in the present.

2. Younger people- Tomorrow will be great. Do not live in the present.

F. The present is all that we have.

Scripture text: Psalm 118:24

Thesis: We need to live one day at a time, in the present. Because of this we need to make the most of every day, Carpe Diem. This is true for three reasons:

For instances:

I. All we have is today.

A. Yesterday has gone.

1. Yesterday was terrible. We look back with regret.

2. Yesterday was great. We look back and want to go back.

3. Did not use it well. What might have been?

4. Jerome K. Jerome says that men have been looking back to the good old days of fifty years ago ever since Adam’s fifty-first birthday. Of course, these good old days were not so good when we were actually living in them.

5. My grandmother.

B. Tomorrow has not arrived.

1. Bored in today. Children who are bored. Teenagers most heard words.

2. Tomorrow we will be enthusiastic. Get older and better.

3. Thus do we, by postponing life, tend to squander our finest opportunities and to miss the choicest joys.

4. Proverbs 27:1- Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring forth.

** Repeat the verse.

II. Today is all we can manage.

A. We cannot handle both yesterday and many tomorrows today. When I get discouraged, bogged down.

1. A juggler.

2. Regrets over yesterday.

3. Thinking about today and tomorrow.

4. Matthew 6:33-34- But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

5. Suicide. Mr. Clovis Chappell “I was having a hard time today. But worse still, I saw a troop of tomorrows coming to me even more drab and gray and forbidding than today. The present and the future taken together were more than I could stand. Therefore, I flung out of life altogether!” I say this as a warning to all who are considering suicide. In the movie Dead Poet’s Society this is so sad. Such a bright future but threw away today thereby destroyed all of the tomorrows.

6. Try all three. Mr. Chappell “How many thousands crack up every year because they try to manage two days at once- sometimes even three! They try to live yesterday, today, and tomorrow all at the same time. No wonder they find the task too great!

7. We can do much in one day.

A. Sins. Overcome then today. Anyone can stop one sin in one given day. My own experiences. Go over list of sins. Repeat verse.

B. Overcome yesterdays. “When my dad left home, it just tore up my world,” cried a young husband as he talked with his wife. “I was nine and lost five pounds.” His eyes clouded with pain. He looked down and leaned against the washing machine. “Guess that’s why I’ve never liked to rock the boat or confront things head on.” “I thought he left because of something I’d done, somehow I caused it. I was sure that if I could just be good enough, keep quiet enough maybe my parents would get back together again.” “But that was thirty-five years ago...” For most of his life this father of three had dragged scarred anchors of memory behind him. In the weeks after this talk he and his wife took hold of the spiritual knife of prayer, and cut him loose from the crippling childhood ropes of fear and guilt. What heavy anchors are you dragging through your life? Isn’t it about time to cut them loose?

** Moses, Rahab, Matthew, Paul, Mary Magdalene

C. Secure a good tomorrow.

1. If we have a good today, tomorrow will take care of itself.