By Theodore Thompson
1960
In business or sports or any other field of endeavor every so often there is stock-taking. Businesses have to have success to keep going; baseball and football teams think success is necessary and so do we like success in all areas of life.
Now applying spiritual stock taking to our faith, let us honestly ask yourselves what our faith has done for us. A noted author puts the question in these words: "what has your religion done for you? For years, probably, you have been attending church studying the Bible and so forth. Ask yourself-what difference has it made in your life, in your home, in your affairs? How much peace of mine has a given you? How much courage? How much understanding? For make no mistake real religion does give us all of these things."
Those of you are to think wisely over these words, what has your faith done for you? Can you think of any direct results or benefits that have come from attending church at St. Olaf for the past one, two, three or four years? Or 10 or 20 even? Has this done anything for your life? Have you received anything from your worship of God? But maybe you can't think of anything positive that is happened to you because of your faith. To you too often if not, maybe you had better throw your faith away. Yes, that is what I said, maybe you had better throw your faith away if nothing is happening because of your faith.
Now before I get accused of heresy, listen to what I said, "maybe you had better throw your faith away." Notice I say your faith in the reason I say your faith, is that if nothing positive is happening, it is because of your faith, not because of the faith that Jesus Christ is giving him. You see your own brand of faith will never work. It is only the faith of Jesus Christ that works. The faith of John Jones, or John Doe, or Ted Thompson will never work it is not the faith of the Bible. You see we can very easily get some ideas of our own on how religion should be. And it is very possible that our own little brand of religion may not be the religion of the Bible. Again, I say, if your faith is not working, throw it away and turn to the faith of the Bible. Start listening to the words of God instead of your own words.
Turning to our text which read some words of Jesus about the faith that works and what it is like. "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. You are my friends if you do what I command you. You did not choose me, but I choose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit."
Now you say wait a minute I thought you asked the question" what has my faith done for me?" And now you read verses that tell me what I should do this is the paradox. I am asking the question what has your faith done for you, oh what positive results have come because of your faith. You see faith doesn't do anything for you; positive results don't come to you until you start living and applying what is said in the Bible. And the Bible says that “he that loses his life shall find it, and except a grain of wheat, fall into the ground and die, it (bideth) alone, but if it dies it bear it much fruit."
You ever sat on a one leg stool? One legged stools don't work. They don't stand by themselves, and they are wobbly to sit on. And one-legged lives, lived devoted to self alone do not work. Two legged stools do not work either. A two-legged stool will not stand by itself it also is wobbly to sit on. Many think they can satisfy God by an occasional worship service and live for themselves. They think worship will complete their lives, but worship and self-service just give a two-legged stool that won't work.
But a three-legged stool is good. They don't wobble. They are good to sit on. With one leg representing self, and good strong legs of service to man and God, we become whole men. So, to speak three-legged stool's that work. We all will of course think of and serve self, but it is only when we also begin to serve God and man that we have a faith that works. It is in service to others that our faith will begin to mean something. It is in losing our lives in service to God and man that we begin to find ourselves. It is only then that our faith begins to do things for us.
Thus, when Jesus Christ uttered these words, "this is my commandment that you love one another" Jesus Christ was proclaiming the faith that works. The faith that does something for us. The faith that says in losing our lives, we find our lives.
You may say, well this sounds good, but I feel satisfied. I don't feel like helping others and serving God. This can be your decision. But stop and think for a minute. Think of 20, 30, 40, or 70 years from now. Think of what I mark you will have made in this world after the scroll of your life is rolled up. Will your epitaph read: "here lies Johns Jones. He was born; he married; he was an engineer; he had three children; he died." Now this might be a good average life. But I don't read anything about eternal values. I think a far better epitaph would be," here lies John Jones. He was born, married, raised children, and was a bookkeeper or whatever occupation it might be, and John Jones walked to the earth as a disciple of Jesus Christ. He lived as a true Christian and led other men to God. Here lies a man who fulfilled the destiny for which Christ wanted."
Fiddler Jones, Edgar Lee Mathers, Spoon River is an interesting character. But if all our life adjoins to this fiddling our lives away on our own interest and pleasures, our lives won't amount to much. The treasure that does not rot and which moths can't eat is the treasures that come from service to God. The important thing for each of us when we look back over our lives will be what have we done for God? Will people say there was a man of God who is faithful to his Lord? Or was a man or woman who simply fiddled his or her life away following his or her individual pleasures?
Last Tuesday night we had a men's brotherhood with a very fine program. We had a speaker from missionary aviation fellowship. He showed us some films of the aviation aspect of missionary work, and he also told us of the story of the five men killed by the Acua Indians in Ecuador. He brought out that it is hard to understand why God allowed these men's to be killed, but now because of this incident many times five men have begun missionary work, many began to support their work. Though the death of these five worldwide interests has been stirred for missionary work. The lives of these men can be told in terms of eternal values. They have inherited the treasures that does not rot. Concerning the man who spoke to us, before joining missionary aviation Fellowship, he was a commercial airlines pilot, and these men make something like $12-$25,000 a year. In his present missionary work, he just makes enough to make ends meet. He probably could be making four or five times as much working for commercial airlines, but Mr. Lawrence says he does not feel he has been shortchanged at all. The great satisfaction is in service to God. Mr. Lawrence has the faith that works. The faith that proclaims you find life and losing it. The faith that follows the commandments of our text; "this is my commandment, that you love one another."
For man to throw away his present faith is tough. It is tough to admit that one is wrong. It is tough to get out of the egocentric life centered whirlpools of our own lives. It is hard to become God centered and man centered instead of self-centered. This takes humility and humility does not seem to be a virtue that we are born with. Pride seems to be the nature that we are born with.
Ben Franklin, in his little diary for self-improvement put humility at the last on his list, but Jesus in the Beatitudes put humility first. For you see it is only the humble person that is teachable. Concerning its opposite, pride, Christian theology has generally put it as the most serious of the deadly sins. CS Lewis a modern Christian writer, says this about pride. "Pride leads to every other vice; it is the complete anti-God state of mind. Pride is the spiritual cancer; eat eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense." Pride in work is fine. Pride in our family and other types of pride are good. But we cannot have pride in our own ability to manage our spiritual lives. We cannot have our own brand of religion. We need to have the receptivity which makes for growth. Pride causes a resistance toward God and cuts out growth. Pride can keep us in our own brand of religion that won't work, but humility renders us teachable so that we see what Jesus Christ said was true. So that we can see that we gain our lives by losing them.
We in our day, along with men of all time, are always in the position of having to be teachable before God so that we can go God's way. God gives grace to the humble but resusteth the proud. The wheat is that which is so heavy that it causes its stock to bend.
The 16th verse reads "you did not choose me, but I choose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit." Dead branches bear no fruit. Branches have to be united with trunks before they can bear fruit. You compile dead branches 100 different ways, and they still won't bear fruit. Orange branches only fulfill their destiny when they bear the fruit for which they were created. Only when branches are united with the trunk and bear fruit are they branches that fulfilled destiny and life. Dead people spiritually, people separated from the life-giving trunk, Jesus Christ, can't bear fruit. People have to be Christians, born again, saved, before they bear the fruit pleasing to God. We as people only fulfill our destiny when we bear fruit for God. We compile our own brands of faith 100 different ways, but if we are not saved, united with Jesus Christ, we do not render the fruit pleasing to God. We need to have the humility to throw our own little brands of faith in one big pile and burn them up. We need to have the faith that works. The faith of the Bible. The faith that says we gain our life by losing our lives. The faith that says we must show love and bear fruit.
Concerning the fruit God demands of us we read in Galatians 6: "but the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control."
And concerning love here is a translation of first Corinthians 13: "love is very patient, very kind; love knows no jealousy; love makes no parade, gives itself no errors,, never selfish, is never rude never irritated, never rather resentful; love is never glad when others go wrong, love is gladdened by goodness, always slow to expose, always eager to believe the best, always hopeful, always patient.
"Spiritual stock-taking. What has your faith done for you? Or rather we should say what has your faith done with you? Have you through your own worship here at St. Olaf and otherwise begun to be less critical? Have you gone to be less envious and jealous? Are you more patient because of your faith? Do you sympathize with those in trouble? Are you less selfish because of your faith? Are you willing to give time and energy to the work of God because of your faith? If there are no differences because of your faith you have the wrong faith. You have a faith of your own making instead of the faith of the Bible. Because the faith of Jesus Christ works. Thousands, perhaps millions of men in history have testified and proven that the faith of Jesus Christ works.
Do you have the faith of Jesus Christ that has made a better man or woman out of you, but has made you a servant of God? If not, have the humility to throw away your present offbeat brand of faith and get the faith of Jesus Christ. The faith that proclaims we gain our lives by losing them. The faith that causes us to bear fruit and have love. The faith of Christ works!
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.
May the peace of God which surpasses all understanding keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.
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