Clayton Presbyterian Church
July 2, 2006
Never the Same River Twice
An ancient Greek philosopher made an interesting statement about life, when he said that you never step into the same river twice. What he was saying was that just as the water that you step in at one moment is not the same a moment later, so life is always changing. And we can’t keep it the same and we can’t get it back.
You have experienced this. I have experienced this. We know what it feels like to make a decision and then regret that decision. We know the rotten feeling of hearing words come out of our own mouths and immediately wish that we hadn’t said them. Or when a click of the “send” button fires off an email that we wish we could take back. And once we do these things, we can’t take them back. You probably have some event or decision in your past where every time you think of it you have pangs of regret. And you would like nothing more than to take it back. But you know that the past is passed, history is set in stone. There is nothing you can do.
But is it? Are our mistakes and errors the last and final word? Or is there another word that is even more final? Think about it. What would you give if you could change your past?
I want us to take these questions and thoughts and feelings to our text this morning.
Colossians 1:9-14
9 For this reason, since the day we heard it, we have not ceased praying for you and asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of God's will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, 10 so that you may lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as you bear fruit in every good work and as you grow in the knowledge of God. 11 May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully 12 giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light. 13 He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. (NRSV)
Last week, we looked at Jesus’ statements that following him means a life of service. This is particularly true for leaders. Leaders in the church must be servant-leaders who seek to do only God’s agenda.
There was so much in the passage last week that I didn’t get to really look at the last line. It read, “The Son of Man [Jesus] came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.” We talked about the “service” part, about how we are to serve others the same way that Christ serves us. But, we didn’t talk about the “ransom” part. What does it mean that Jesus’ life is a ransom?
Redemption
The word ‘ransom’ is part of a larger concept of the Bible called redemption. You have probably heard this many times. We talk about Christ the redeemer. We talk about redemption. But I don’t think we really know what it means.
The basic idea of redemption is doing something for another that they can’t do for themselves. The most common situation in which redemption arises is when property or persons have been confiscated to settle a debt. A redeemer is one who pays the debt for the debtor, thus buying back what was confiscated.
So imagine that you have your credit cards maxed out and you are in debt up to your eyeballs. You take your plasma-screen TV down to the pawnshop and hock it. But you still have no money and so they come and repossess your car. You still have no money and so they only way that you will see your stuff again is if you have a redeemer—someone to do for you what you can’t do for yourself.
But in the ancient world, it wasn’t just stuff that was confiscated, but people. You or your family members could be confiscated and sold into slavery to pay for your debts. This was very common throughout the ancient world. Imagine being a slave because you made a bad business decision. You would long for someone to redeem you and pay your ransom so that you might be free again.
The Jews had experienced this. In fact, it was their formative experience. When they were slaves down in Egypt, they could not get free. But God became their redeemer. He sent Moses to confront Pharaoh and to lead them out of Egypt. He did for them what they couldn’t do for themselves. Redemption in this sense means salvation, and freedom, and life.
But this same thing happened again hundreds of years later. It was well after they had taken possession of the promised land. But they did not follow God. Instead, they followed the other gods. They committed the worst of sins—no, not the sin of adultery, but the sin of idolatry, that is the worship of anything other than God. And so, because of their disobedience, God gave them over to the foreign nations and they were conquered by the Babylonians and the Persians. They languished there, praying for God to save them. And he did. Once again he became their redeemer. Jeremiah 31:11 says, “For the Lord has ransomed Jacob [this is another name for Israel], and has redeemed him form hands too strong for him.” God brought them back to their homeland from exile.
They were the redeemed people of God. They had been brought out of their misery and bondage. They had been remade. They had been given a fresh start.
System Restore
Almost all of us use computers at some level or another. And we all dread doing something wrong which will cause our computers to crash. There is a feature on Microsoft Windows XP that provides an antidote for this. Its called "system restore." How does it work? Suppose you suffer a system crash on your computer this Thursday. You're not a computer expert, and you don't know how to recover the last two weeks of financial information you entered Wednesday, your daughter's history report she started writing Monday, or your favorite game. All you have to do is select "system restore" and specify the date to which you want your machine reset. Voila! Problem solved. All the things you somehow messed up are put back in their configuration as of that earlier day.
Wouldn't you like to market that feature for human lives? Do you think you could supply it fast enough to keep up with the demand? Bob would "system restore" to the day before he began the affair. Sue would go back to the day before she tampered with payroll data. Ivan would choose the day before the big fight that caused his son to run away from home.
Maybe you can remember the day when things crashed for you—and you'd give anything you own to restore things to the way they were.
God won't erase all the consequences of our actions, but he promises things far better: to forgive us, to work for the highest good even through what is bad, and one day to make all things new.
What Windows XP calls "system restore" God calls redemption. Redemption is where God takes the sins, the errors, the mistakes of our lives and restores them.
But the way that system restore deals with them is by erasing them. But we don’t really want our past erased. We want it redeemed, bought back, and made right. To buy something back requires a cost and a sacrifice. It is easier to erase it because there is no cost. But we know that God wants to redeem our past and our whole lives because he has paid the price, on the cross.
Costly Grace
In the movie The Last Emperor, the young child anointed as the last emperor of China lives a life of luxury with 1,000 servants at his command. "What happens when you do wrong?" his brother asks. "When I do wrong, someone else is punished," the boy emperor replies. To demonstrate, he breaks a jar, and one of the servants is beaten.
In Christianity, Jesus reversed that ancient pattern: when the servants erred, the King was punished. Grace is free only because the giver himself has borne the cost.
Too often we just want to erase or forget those parts of our lives that are painful or that fill us with regret. It’s like we have a wrist that is painful all the time and we just want to lop it off so that we can be done with the pain. But that is not how God works. God is in the business of making us whole and that means that he wants to restore and heal every part of us.
And this is what God does. In Romans, chapter 8, we read this, “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.”
What this tells us is that God takes all the parts of our lives—the parts that we like, and the parts that we don’t—and works them into his purpose for our lives. There is nothing or no one that is so far gone that God can’t redeem it and use it.
Let me ask you a question, What would you change in your life if you could change one thing? Think about it for a second. Would it be something about your physical appearance? Would it be a weakness or a character flaw, like anger, holding grudges, or lack of self control? Would it be something that you have done that you wish that you could take back? Would it be something that you wish that you could have as a “do over”?
I want to suggest that this thing that you would like to change is the very place that God wants most to work in your life.
So often we want to do away with the parts of our lives that are painful, or shameful. But those are the parts that God wants to heal. But we have to give him access. Too often we don’t. That is like asking a doctor to give you stitches but not letting him see the wound.
God can restore any part of your life. God wants to restore ALL the parts of your life. Just ask him to. When you think about your past, I want to encourage you to pray a two word prayer, simply, “Redeem this.” Just ask God, in his way and in his time, to redeem it, to buy it back and to save it. And then watch what he does.
Life from Death
Over 100 years ago, a tornado struck the prairies of Minnesota. Many were killed, hundreds were injured, and one small town was almost demolished. In the midst of the disaster, an elderly British surgeon and his two medically trained sons worked almost around the clock for days aiding the stricken, bandaging wounds, and setting broken limbs.
Their heroic work did not go unnoticed. Their excellence as physicians and their selflessness in the service of those in need created a following among the tornado victims. The doctor and his sons were offered financial backing to build a hospital, provided that they took charge.
The men agreed and in 1889 founded a clinic that soon attracted nationwide attention. Their little clinic grew.
The city was Rochester, Minnesota. The elderly doctor’s name: William W. Mayo. His sons: William J. and Charles Mayo.
Their clinic is called simply “The Mayo Clinic.” It now consists of over 500 physicians treating more than 200,000 people a year. It is known worldwide as one of the premier places of health, healing and excellence in medicine.
I’m sure if you asked the citizens of Minnesota about the Rochester tornado at the time, they would have said it was all about death and destruction, an unqualified disaster.
But, put in the perspective of better than a century, and in the hands of a creative God, the tornado was really about life, help, and healing.
We are not saying that God CAUSED the tornado, with all of its destruction, to happen so that good would come out of it. We are saying that God used it for his good purposes. Without God, evil and suffering generate only more evil and more suffering. But with God good things come out of bad things. Good can come out of evil situations. Comfort and hope can come out of suffering.
For His Good Purposes
This is the same in our lives as well. So that, if you have either done something bad or suffered something bad, God not only can, but wants, to use it for his good purposes as he redeems his creation.
There are people who have survived cancer or survived abuse and God uses them to help other victims of those things. For, they can relate like no one else can. They can not only provide wisdom and knowledge but empathy and compassion.
Moreover, there is the example of Chuck Colson. Colson went to prison as a result of his involvement in Nixon’s Watergate activities. While in prison, God met Colson and Colson encountered God. After he got out, Colson started Prison Fellowship, now an international organization in prisons all over the world that aims to introduce prisoners to the life and hope found only in Jesus Christ.
God can use anything. God wants to use everything. All the parts of your life, especially those parts that you would like to do away with. Part of the way that God redeems our past is by putting it to good use. He does not wipe it out, but he employs them to accomplish his redemptive purpose in the world and in the lives of others.
Just offer it all to God, saying, “redeem this.”