The old man was a little far-sighted, but he wanted to take in all the scenery, so he leaned his face right over the bike and examined every inch. Looking up after a while, the old man grinned and said to the biker, 'I bet that motorcycle goes fast.' But no sooner were the words out of his mouth, the light changed, and the biker thought he'd show this old geezer what a real chopper could do. He gave it full throttle, and within 30 seconds the speedometer read 199 miles an hour. He chucked with satisfaction.
Suddenly he noticed a dot in his rear view mirror, a dot that was growing larger. Something was gaining on him. What could it be? He slowed down to get a better look, and whatever the thing was it flashed past him so fast he couldn't identify it.
The thing disappeared over the horizon, whipped around,
and came right back at him. As it zipped past he recognized the rider. It was
the old man on the lime green moped.
How could this be? The biker took another look into his rearview mirror. There
was that speck again coming back his way and growing larger. The biker tried
to outrun it, but it couldn't be done. It was a moot point in seconds for the
moped slammed into the rear of the Harley Davidson. The collision destroyed
both bikes. You could hear the impact for miles.
The biker extricated himself from the mangled steel pretzel that had once been
his beloved Harley Davidson. But the old man had fared even worse. He lay groaning
beneath the black and smoking remnants of his moped. Even the hardened biker
was moved with compassion. He knelt beside the old man's face and softly asked,
'Is there anything I can do for you?'
The old man choked, coughed and replied, 'Yes. Could you please unhook my suspenders
from your handlebars?'" You and I would never purposely hook our suspenders
to anything dangerous. And yet many of us might be willing to lean over for
a closer look. The world around us is littered with the mangled lives of men
and women.
People who never intended to get hooked yet their religion
is a sham, they are playing with Christianity as if it were a menu in a fast
food store. Their real attention is else where. They only wanted to get a closer
look at the shiny colours of some forbidden sin. The husband who never intended
to lose his family, but decided it was okay to flirt around the boundaries of
adultery, and now he pulls himself from the wreckage of a smoking marriage.
The business person who decides that cutting an ethical corner here and there
will make a ride to the top quicker. Now she's a collision waiting to happen.
So many people never intended to sabotage a marriage or a friendship. They just
drift into resentment or bitterness or revenge, and they suffer a relational
train wreck that's destroying their heart. Sometimes we get tangled up in more
subtle enemies: hurry or success or a relationship. Some of you are here tonight,
and you are seeing yourselves as helpless victims, pawns of circumstances beyond
your control, decisions other people made. Lets examine what Jesus makes of
sham religion in Mark 12. Please turn to it with me.
As we saw in the video reading, Jesus takes the initiative with the parable
of the Tenants. He knew the religion of his day was a sham, a charade. Pretending
to be holy, they were worshipping themselves instead of God, and Jesus was a
threat, they wanted to kill him. Read 12:12. So the religious leaders try and
trap Jesus with three loaded questions:
A political question about paying taxes. Labour - Conservative?
A theological question about marriage. Strict or Lax?
A moral question about the Law. Situation ethics or
legalist?
Why were they asking these questions? Because Jesus was a threat to their security.
They were playing at religion. Christianity was just a game. A game of pick
and choose. I'll choose what I want to believe and I will reject what I don't.
Jesus cuts through all their sham with two questions
of his own.
Read 12:24 and 12:35-37. The Scriptures and the Power
of God revealed in Jesus Christ. God and man in the same person. Not someone
who lived 2000 years ago but someone who is here tonight, asking the same questions
of you and I. Waiting to see if you will come up with excuses or fall on your
face in worship and adoration.
What we make of Jesus Christ is the most important question we will ever have
to answer. So let me ask you. Who are you serving tonight? Who are you trying
to kid? Are you playing at Christianity? Do you enjoy the intellectual games
of debating religious issues while never acknowledging Jesus is Lord of your
sex life, Lord of your bank balance, Lord of your career, Lord of your destiny.
Do you enjoy slagging off the Church while never committing yourself to the
Body of Christ here in Virginia Water? Jesus is Sovereign over your life. Over
His Church. He takes this Church very seriously. He died so that we could become
His body, His Church.
His light in this community. Jesus exposes their hypocrisy.
Read 12:38-40. As a Christian leader I take that warning very very seriously,
and I hope you do too. Sham religion exposed. If not now, then one day when
all our lives will be exposed to the heat of God's holy fire.
So next time you see a Harvey Davidson or more likely a moped, ask yourself,
what have I hooked my suspenders to today? Make a resolution in your heart to
turn away from sham religion that plays at being a Christian while bending over
to take a closer look at sin. You can do this. You must do this if you are going
to survive and thrive as a Christian in a tempting, mesmerising but a hostile
anti-Christian godless world. I'll tell you a secret, friends. All of us live
under this tension.
So many people say, "I would love to get to know God
better," or "I would like to get more involved in Church," "If only I weren't
so busy." "If only I had a better small group leader." "If only the Church services
were more to my liking." We all live in close proximity
to sin and temptation.
We all live in a world that will try to tempt us or
intimidate us into settling for less than God's best. We all live in a world
that tells us to assert ourselves and think about number one first.
Listen, friends, this is your one and only life. This is your day. This is your
Church. So what do you need to resolve in your heart? Do you need to end a relationship
that's dishonouring God? End it! Make the call. Do it tonight. Do you need to
repent of unethical practices in your business? Repent and set things right.
Do it now. Do you need to reorder your time? Reorder your time. Do you need
to repent of sinful attitudes or negative gossip about your brothers and sisters
in Christ? Then repent. Now. Before you leave. Is there some area in your life
or a relationship where you need to pursue forgiveness or reconciliation and
you haven't been doing it because you've been seeing yourself as the victim?
Then stop and take responsibility before God for what has happened. Be reconciled.
This is your day. This is your life. Read 12:30-31.
Do this and you will live. Play at sham religion and you will die. You must
resolve in your own heart. You must do this. No one else will. I'll tell you
why so much is at stake here, friends. Some of you have hooked your suspenders
up to the wrong thing, and you're feeling the pain right now, and your religion
is a sham. On the surface you may appear spiritual but underneath you are feeling
only shame, guilt and condemnation. You resolve this night, "I will honour God
with all my heart, with all my mind, with all my soul, with all my strength.
You resolve tonight that you will not hand over this one and only life that
God has given you to any power -not to any person, not to any relationship,
not to any job, not to any boss, not to any habit, not to any force, not to
any schedule. Resolve with all your heart, your soul, your mind and strength
and God will honour you.
Let me close with another story about how God used someone who was totally dedicated
in heart, soul, mind and strength - this one is true and its about today, Mothers
Day, told by a friend of John Ortberg. It concerns a convalescent home that
is not a particularly pleasant place. It is large, understaffed, and overfilled
with senile, helpless and lonely people waiting to die. On the brightest of
days it seems dark inside and smells of sickness and stale urine. I went there
once or twice a week for four years, but I never wanted to go there. And I always
left with a sense of relief. It's not the kind of place one gets used to. "On
this particular day I was walking in a hallway that I had not visited before,
looking in vain for a few who were alive enough to receive a flower and a few
words of encouragement. This hallway seemed to contain some of the worst cases
strapped onto carts or into wheelchairs and looking completely helpless. "As
I neared the end of this hallway, I saw an old woman strapped in a wheelchair.
Her face was an absolute horror.
The empty stare and white pupils of her eyes told me that she was blind. The
large hearing aid over one ear told me she was almost deaf. One side of her
face was being eaten by cancer. "There was a discoloured and running sore covering
part of one cheek, and it had pushed her nose to one side, dropped one eye,
and distorted her jaw so that what should have been the corner of her mouth
was the bottom of her mouth. As a consequence, she drooled constantly.
I was told later that when new nurses arrived, the supervisors would send them
to feed this woman, thinking if they could stand this sight they could stand
anything in the building.
"I also later learned that this woman was 89 years old, and that she had been
here bedridden, blind, nearly deaf and alone for 25 years. This was Mabel. I
don't why I spoke to her. She looked less likely to respond than most people
I saw in that hallway, but I put a flower in her hand and said, 'Here's a flower
for you. Happy Mother's Day.' "She held up the flower to her face and tried
to smell it. Then she spoke, and much to my surprise her words, although somewhat
garbled because of her deformity, were obviously produced by a clear mind. She
said, 'Thank you, it's lovely. But can I give it to someone else? I can't see
it, you know. I'm blind.' "I said, 'Of course,' and I pushed her in her chair
back down the hallway to a place where I thought I could find some alert patients.
I found one and stopped the chair. Mabel held out the flower and said, 'Here,
this is from Jesus.' That was when it began to dawn on me:
This is not an ordinary human being. Later I wheeled her back to her room and
learned about her history. "She'd grown up on a small farm that she managed
with only her mother until her mom died. Then she ran the farm alone until 1950
when her blindness and sickness sent her to the convalescent hospital. For 25
years she got weaker and sicker with headaches, backaches, stomach aches, and
then the cancer came too. "Her three roommates were all human vegetables who
screamed occasionally but never talked. They often soiled their bedclothes and
because the hospital was understaffed, especially on Sundays when I usually
visited, the stench was often overpowering. "Mabel and I became friends over
the next few weeks, and I went to see her once or twice a week for the next
three years. Her first words to me were usually an offer of hard candy from
a tissue box near her bed. Some days I would read to her from the Bible, and
often when I would pause, she would continue reciting the passage from memory
word for word. Other days I would take a book of hymns and sing with her, and
she'd know all the words of the old songs.
"For Mabel, these were not just exercises in memory. She would often stop in
mid-hymn and make a brief comment about lyrics she considered particularly relevant
to her situation. I never heard her speak of loneliness or pain except in the
stress she placed on certain lines in certain hymns. "It was not many weeks
before I turned from a sense that I was being helpful, to a sense of wonder.
And I would go to her with a pen and paper to write down the things she would
say. What follows is the story behind one scrap of paper. "During a hectic week
of final exams, I was frustrated because my mind seemed pulled in ten directions
at once with all the things I had to think about. The question occurred to me:
What does Mabel have to think about? Hour after hour, day after day, week after
week.
Not even able to know if it's day or night. So I went to her and asked, 'Mabel,
what do you think about when you lie there?' And she said, 'I think about my
Jesus.'
"I sat there and thought for a moment about the difficulty
for me of thinking about Jesus for even five minutes. And I asked, 'What do
you think about Jesus?' She replied slowly and deliberately as I wrote, and
this is what she said: 'I think about how good he's been to me. He's been awfully
good to me in my life, you know. I'm one of those kind who's mostly satisfied.
Lots of folks wouldn't care much for what I think. Lots of folks would think
I'm kind of old-fashioned, but I don't care. I'd rather have Jesus. He's all
the world to me.' "And then Mabel began to sing an old hymn, 'Jesus is all the
world to me, my life, my joy, my all. He's my strength from day to day, without
him I would fall. When I am sad, to him I go. No other one can cheer me so.
When I am sad he makes me glad. He is my friend.' Incredible as it may seem,
a human being really lived like this. I know, I knew her. "How could she do
it? Seconds ticked and minutes crawled and so did days and weeks and months
and years of pain, without human company, and without an explanation of why
it was all happening. And she lay there and sang hymns. How could she do it?
The answer, I think, is that Mabel had something that you and I may not have
much of. She had power. Lying there in that bed, unable to move, unable to see,
unable to hear, unable to talk to anyone.
She had incredible power." Mabel's race has been run. Her story is done. Yours
hasn't finished yet, neither has mine. Here's what you need to know: God was
with Mabel, this 89-year-old woman. She died alone and unknown in an obscure
hospital bed. But today thousands of people in this and other countries have
heard or read her story. They have been given an amazing gift by this woman
who thought she died alone and forgotten. God is with you, whoever you are,
whatever shambles you find yourself in.
God is at work in your life, so you resolve to honour him with all your heart,
with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength, quit sham
religion tonight for good and forever. Let's stand for closing prayer.
Illustrations taken from a transcript of
a sermon by John Ortberg, Willow Creek, Chicago. Used with grateful thanks.