09-05-10 Understanding The Times

We are going to take a two week break from our study of Romans

because there are a couple of things I’ve been wanting to do

and this is as good a time to do them as any.

What we’re going to do today may seem a little strange to you,

but after thinking about it for the past several months

I’m certain it’s very much worth doing.

I did something this past summer

that I have not done in a very long time -

I accepted an invitation to speak at a teen summer camp.

Funny how it is...

if I have an opportunity to build a friendship with a teenager on a one-to-one basis

I just love it,

but trying to speak to teenagers in a group

is a role I generally avoid at all costs.

It’s just not a setting that fits me.

But I did re-enter that world briefly this past summer,

and what I share with you this morning

is the last talk I gave to that group of young people.

I want to share it with you this morning

almost exactly as I shared it with those teens

because I think the truth I was trying to communicate to them

is just as relevant for all of us

no matter what our age or situation in life.

So, if you’ll let me take you to camp for the morning,

I’d like to share with you what I shared with them.

When I began my comments to that group

I started by telling them

that I knew what I was about to do

had some risks involved with it,

especially the risk of totally missing where they were at in their life right now.

Not long ago

I had a teenager tell me

that the beginning of understanding the teenage world

is to understand that, well, as he said it, “... we live totally in the NOW!

All that matters to us, all we’re focused on

is what’s taking place right now, this instant in our lives.”

I thought his comment showed tremendous insight.

I told my teenage audience that I was all too keenly aware that,

as my voice was droning on up front

what many of them were really focused on

is the next text message they would either send or receive,

or finding out the name of that cute girl two rows in front of them.

These are the issues that define their lives

and determine whether or not this day is worth living.

And of course TODAY is all there is, really.

But if we’re honest,

that NOW-focused approach to life

doesn’t change all that much

even as we move into our adult years.

But there are some things I very much want us to know,

things that, if we understand them,

can make it far easier for us to live in the NOW of our existence

in a way that really works for us,

in a way that makes the NOW as good as it can possibly be

and at the same time helps us prepare for what’s coming in the future.

And I also hold onto the hope

that with a few of you,

maybe with just one or two,

what I say during the next few minutes

will help to ignite a fire inside you,

a fire that will grow until it becomes a consuming passion in your life.

But for this to make sense

I need to take us back in history for just a few minutes,

both way back,

and then just a little ways back.

And we’ll start by going way back.

You may not know much about the early history of the Nation of Israel

or about the man who was used by God

to transform that young nation

in ways that still deeply impact it today.

The man’s name was David.

Even though he lived more than 3000 years ago

the events of his life

are as significant for us right now

as is the life of anyone living today

because God chose the Nation of Israel

and especially King David

as a special tool with which to tell us about Himself.

David was the second King of Israel

and certainly the greatest King the nation ever had.

But he was not born into a royal family

and apart from God’s direct intervention

he would never have become the King.

He was born the son of a shepherd

and in his early teens he assumed that he would live out his life,

like his father, in obscurity, herding sheep.

But God had other plans for him,

plans that radically changed the course of David’s life

and ultimately caused him to become one of the most influential men

in the history of the human race.

And before we go any farther with this

let me tell you right now

that even though our world appears to be a very different place today

than it was 3000 years ago,

still the God who created us,

the God who created David

and the God who created you and me

has never stopped doing in the lives of His people

the same type of things He did in the life of David.

If you’re like most of us

right now you’re allowing your friends,

and your work colleagues,

and your family to tell you who you are

and whether or not your life has value.

You listen closely to what they say with their attitudes and their actions

believing that they can tell you the truth

about your place on this earth,

and your purpose for being here.

But they don’t know the truth about you.

To be honest,

most of them don’t even care about you

because they’re too focused on themselves to focus on you.

But even the ones who really do care

don’t know anything about the unique purpose for which your God created you,

or the unique role that only you can fulfill in this world.

And before we go any farther this morning

I want very much

for you to listen very carefully to what I say to you right now.

Once you place your life into the hands of your God

all the rules of life change.

Apart from Christ,

apart from His life in you

and His life being lived through you

your past pretty much determines your future.

It is the way of life on this earth outside of Christ.

David was born a shepherd’s son

and apart from God’s intervention in his life

he would have died a shepherd.

But two things changed that forever -

David had a heart for God

and God had a heart for David.

And it works the same way in our lives today -

in Christ who you have been

and what you’ve done

will never ever determine who you will be

and what your God will do in you or through you.

I’ve been near this whole God thing long enough

and close enough

to be able to promise you that with absolute certainty.

But let me get back to David.

As a result of a remarkable series of events,

events that began with him killing the greatest single enemy of the Nation of Israel on the earth at that time,

a 9 foot tall giant by the name of Goliath,

David was thrust into a national popularity

that infuriated King Saul.

And the tension between Saul and David became so intense

and Saul felt so threatened by David

that eventually Saul decided his only hope of staying in power

was to kill David.

David had a strong friendship with Saul’s son, Jonathan,

and Jonathan found out about his father’s plot to kill David

and warned him to run for his life.

For months David was forced into a hide-and-seek game with the King

running and hiding literally for his life

as the King sent his armies throughout the nation

looking for David with the hope of killing him.

It finally got so bad

that David was forced to get out of the country

and cross the boarder into the neighboring land

so that Saul couldn’t find him.

But during the months he was there

something fascinating began to happen.

God began to do something remarkable in the hearts and minds

of many of the greatest men

and the most powerful warriors in the nation,

and day after day more and more of them left Israel

and crossed over and joined themselves to David,

placing themselves under his command.

We are told that the least of these men was equal to a hundred of the enemy,

and the greatest were equal to a thousand.

And it wasn’t long before David had under his command

an army of more than three hundred thousand men.

But I’ve shared all of this with you

because there was one very special group of men I want to tell you about,

a group of 200 mentioned in 1 Chronicles 12:32.

They were described as...men who understood the times, with knowledge of what Israel should do...

...men who understood the times...

Now, look at what’s going on in this nation at this point in history -

it was a time of tremendous turmoil and confusion,

a time when the armies of the King

were frantically trying to find and execute David,

while at the same time David was organizing a massive resistance army

committed to the overthrow and destruction of the King.

Nobody knew who to follow,

or where to go,

or what to do,

or who would win and who would loose.

And yet in all of this tension and turmoil and confusion

God Himself stepped into the minds of 200 choice men

and gave them the ability to understand the times.

They knew what needed to be done,

they knew how to do it.

OK, so what?

Well, stay with me a little longer

and I’ll show you so what.

But first I want us to visit one other young man

in the fall of 1966.

He was 19 years old

and both his own life and his world were in turmoil.

He’d just graduated from high school in the Spring of 1965

and went directly to college that fall

because his choice was between going to college

and being drafted and shipped off to Viet Nam

to fight a war he wanted nothing to do with.

He did OK in college his first year,

but he had no idea where he was headed

or even why.

He’d been a church kid up to that point in his life

but it meant very little to him.

When he looked at the people in his church

he saw nothing that attracted him

or impressed him at all.

They all seemed old, and out of touch with all of the truly important issues in his own life.

Church was just a place where the guy up front

told you to try harder to be a good person.

It didn’t touch his life

and meant nothing to him.

He loved the music of a new group called Simon and Garfunkel.

He loved their music

because they took all of his confusion

and questions

and frustrations and turned them into poetry he could understand.

“And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming
And the sign said, "The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls"
And whispered in the sounds of silence...”

There were no prophets,

there was no truth,

there was only isolation, and loneliness, and silence.

Once he got out of his parents’ house

he pretty much stopped going to church.

There was no reason to go

and a whole lot of reasons not to.

The summer of 1966 he got a job at a grubby little pallet board company

where he and three or four other students

ran huge nailing machines making pallet boards for 6 hours Monday through Friday,

and then 8 hours on Saturday.

Bill was one of his fellow workers,

a student like himself,

but in some ways he knew that he and Bill were very different.

One Friday night after work he found out just how different they were.

Just before they left for the night

Bill pulled him aside and said, “Hey, just want you to know,

I’m going to drop acid tonight

and in case something goes wrong with the trip

I want you to know what’s going on

when I come in tomorrow morning.”

Acid...LSD...

The two of them ended up talking for more than an hour

and in the end he knew one thing for sure -

there was nothing going on in his own life

that meant near as much to him

as these drug-induced trips meant to his friend, Bill.

The summer ended and he went back to school

but he knew he had no more idea where he was going

or why than when he started school the year before.

Then, about two months into the fall semester,

the strangest thing happened.

He had this urge to read the Bible.

It wasn’t like he thought he should read it,

he actually wanted to read it.

Up to that point in his life

the Bible had been at the top of his “most boring books in the world” list.

But now here he was with this longing to read it.

He didn’t dare tell anyone what was going on inside him for fear they’d think he was crazy,

but he decided to give it a try.

He started reading in the New Testament, in the book of Matthew.

During the next few weeks he read through Matthew,

and Mark,

and most of Luke,

and what he found there was so different from the stuff he’d been given in church.

He discovered that this Jesus in the Bible

actually seemed to try to talk people out of following Him.

Jesus said to him, "The foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head."

Mat 8:20

And He was saying to them all, "If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me. Luk 9:23

And he also saw that this Jesus in the Bible

wasn’t trying to get people to try harder to be better.

All He was doing

was looking for those few

who would be willing to take their lives, just as they were,

and place them into Jesus’ hands - literally giving Him the authority

to lead them into the future He chose for them...no matter what.

He didn’t want their promises...He wanted their lives.

Then came that terrifying Friday night in the late fall of 1966

when this young man knew

that this same Jesus in the Bible

was asking him to make the same choice - “Will you give Me your life?”

And when he responded by saying, “OK, if you want my life you can have it!”,

it really did change the course of his life forever.

A lot of things changed for him that night,

but then a lot of things didn’t change too.

The world around him was still in confusion.

The Viet Nam War was still raging,

national leaders were being assassinated,

many of his fellow students were marching in protests and rioting on college campuses.

And even though he tried several more churches

he still wasn’t very impressed with what he saw taking place in them.

They all just seemed to be playing little church games,

worried about how many people were coming

and whether or not your hair was too long or your skirt was too short.

But during the next few years his fascination with the Bible continued,

and he kept reading,

and trying to understand what he found there.

And then one day he came to that same statement we looked at a few minutes ago,

that one describing ...men who understood the times...

and it created within him both a longing and a hope -

a longing to be that type of man,

and the hope...the conviction that that was one of the things that God both could and would do

in the minds of those who chose to place their lives into His hands,

whether they lived in the chaos and confusion of Israel 3000 years ago,

or in the chaos and confusion of our modern world,

a world in which everyone does whatever they feel like doing,

and most people live most of their lives

filled with pain and confusion and regret

because no one seems to know what really works in life and what doesn’t.

That was more than 40 years ago

and during the past 40 years

God more than kept His promise to that young man.

He began first of all

by teaching him how to understand his own life,

how to make sense of a whole bunch of confusing things going on inside of him,

bringing order, and strength, and clear purpose and direction where at first there was only confusion.

And then He began to truly show him how to ... understand the times...,

how to understand how this life we’re called to

is truly designed to operate,

showing him the things that make life as rich and fulfilling as it can possibly be.

He traveled a lot at first...throughout the Carribean, Europe, the United States,

experiencing things that changed him forever.

And then, when the time was right,

God found a place for him that fit him perfectly,

a place where he could make a difference and give what he had to give

without being destroyed in the process.

Well, that kid of the 60's is an old man now,

62 years old...

And a big chunk of what His God had for him to do is now in the past.

But there is one thing he is even more certain of today

than he was 40 years ago -

the God he serves is in the same business today that He was in 3000 years ago,

and in the chaos of the 60's.

He is still teaching those who will risk coming to Him how to ...understand the times...

And never before has there been a more urgent need for such people in our world.

And why in the world

have I taken our time together this morning

to share this with you?

I’ve done it because I know that

there are really only two possible choices open to you.

If you want

you can take the approach that the rest of our generation is taking.

You can frantically try to find and then hang onto

anything that will make you feel good for a little while.

But in the end the good feelings always end,

and the ache and the confusion and the loneliness and the sense of shame always returns,

and everybody has lots of ideas,

but nobody ever seems to have any answers.

Or you can decide to do

what only a very few throughout history have done -

you can take your life

and place it into the hands of your Creator,

giving Him the right and the freedom to do with you and with whatever future you have left

what He knows is right.

And if you do,

and if you learn to hear His voice,

and then trust what He says to you,

this for certain I can promise you.

He will not make you religious,

but He will rebuild your life,

and He’ll do it in a way that places a rock-solid foundation under your feet,

no matter what’s happening in the world around you,

or in the lives of your friends.

And He will also teach you to ...understand the times...

He’ll teach you first of all,

and perhaps most of all

to understand the times of your own life,

to see why He has placed you where He’s placed you,

and to recognize the unique seasons of our lives

and the very specific callings He gives us in each of those seasons.

And He’ll also equip us for whatever is coming,

and do it in a way that makes life in the NOW

as good as it can possibly be,

and at the same time prepare us for what’s coming in the near future,

a time that will very likely be

the most chaotic time in the history of our world.