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Turning Dreams into Deeds Hebrews 11:1-2
As a generation, we have many things to worry about. Many of them we have worried about a good part of our lives. Fortunately, we don’t seem to worry too much any more about nuclear war, although with terrorism, we do worry about the possibilities of nuclear arms being used. We worry about the environment. We worry about the hole in the ozone. We worry about too much ultraviolet light and what it can do to our skin and eyes. We worry today about the economy because things seem to be slowing down and people are losing their jobs. We do worry about the terror in the world. But as a generation, one thing that we do not worry much about at all is heresy. There have been previous generations of Christians for whom the worry about heresy was one of the things that were always on their minds. These people believed things that were sometimes crazy and bazaar and sometimes were close but not close enough to the truth. If you allowed these beliefs to live on it would eventually have destroyed the faith. So there have been many generations of Christians where fighting the war against heresy and worrying about these crazy beliefs have been one of the chief concerns of that generation. For us, living in America and the new millennium, we just really don’t care much. You can believe whatever you want. It doesn’t matter. So we don’t think much about heresy.
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But I tell you there are some heresies among us. A lot of times when people talk about heresy, it is the same old thing, but I look beyond some of the things that people get worried about and see some much more subtle things that we should be concerned about. One, the way that we talk about and utilize prayer as Christians in this culture today really borders on heresy. Prayer is not an interchange between God, but it is more like magic where we try to prey upon God to get God to do what we want to do. Think about it. If there is exchange between us and God, do you think that we will never change our minds about something if we are really praying? A lot of the people I know never change their minds when they pray. They are always praying for God to change everything to fit what they want to do as if their mind is always right and God’s mind might always be wrong. Let’s change God. It’s heresy to think that the King of Kings and Lord of Lords who reigns over the universe doesn’t know some things better than us. If there is really a change in communication, then we might need to change what we think every once in a while. A lot of people think they are praying when they are really re-arranging their prejudices. That borders on heresy. Another heresy that we have today is the belief that a lot of people have about angels. A lot of what people believe about angels today has nothing to do with the Christian faith and nothing to do with the Bible. Yes, there are some
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verses that talk about “he shall send his angels to attend thee and to protect thee,” but if you look at the vast experience of people in the Bible with angels, you are going to find an altogether different story. Jacob when he is by the Brook Jabbok wrestles with an angel till the break of dawn and then the only way he gets out of it is living with a limp. Balaam, the man famous for his donkey, was a man whose life was saved by his donkey. He could not see the angel of the Lord that was standing in his path ready to kill him because he was working contrary to the will of God. If you look at Mary and Joseph in the New Testament, and yes they are blessed by what the angel tells them, but stop and think for a moment. Mary’s life is turned upside down. Nothing that Joseph thought was going to happen turns out exactly the way it was going to. They wind up being the scandal of Nazareth, and instead of settling down to live in their village and thinking everything is going to be OK, they wind up having to run for their lives and take that baby with them to Egypt. If you see an angel, my best advice to you is to run because an angel has a message from God. The messages from angels in the Bible come with challenges, missions, and things that people have to do. What people believe today about angels really borders on heresy.
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Jim Wallace has really been a shaping Christian thinker at the later part of the 20th Century. I know that many of you at times during your lives have subscribed to the magazine Sojourners of which he was the editor. Jim Wallace says that the greatest heresy in our generation is believing that faith is a little private feeling; that faith is simply something that we have and is something that we try to acquire so we can have peace of mind and consolation and comfort of our spirits. He says that that is the greatest heresy that threatens to do the most damage to the church and to the kingdom because that is nothing about what faith is. If you read in the Bible, faith is always connected to doing. The passage of scripture, which we read earlier, is simply the first two verses in a long chapter, which we call the faith chapter. We know the love chapter is First Corinthians 13. This is the faith chapter. After this introduction, all these things that the people of faith have done are listed. It is by faith that Abraham leaves his home and goes to a place he doesn’t know, following the invisible voice of God. It is by faith that Noah, who had no idea that there was a storm coming of such magnitude, builds an ark while it is still dry. By faith, Moses leads the children of Israel out of Egypt. All of these things just keep getting listed one after the other. It is by faith that the children of Israel conquered the walls of Jericho. It is by faith that people endured persecution, sword, and dungeon, all of these things. Ninety percent of the time in the New Testament, when the word faith is used, it is a verb. It is not something
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that we have or acquire. It is something that we do. I think Jim Wallace is right. One of the things that would utterly destroy the work of Christ on earth would be this belief that faith is something that I just keep inside me and that it is something that is meant for the way that I feel and for my comfort in life. That is not faith. I am sure some of you have seen the movie or read the book or remember when Peter Marshall was chaplain of the United States Senate. He spoke those great words when he said, “Belief becomes faith only at the point of action. It is not simply what we think about God but when we take what we think about God and put it into action in our lives.” Clarence Jordan started Koinonia Farm back in the 1960’s. This was an interracial farming community in the midst of racial strife in the South. He was a Greek scholar, but when he translated the New Testament, he put it in that southern idiom so that it had the feel of the Deep South. This is the way that he translated the verses that we read earlier. He said, “Faith is turning dreams into deeds. It is betting your life on the unseen realities.” That’s what faith is. You can’t see what God is doing. You can’t see the end of what God has in store, but it is believing that those unseen dreams are God inspired and I am going to give my life to do these things even though I can’t see the outcome of it yet. Faith is turning dreams into deeds. Let me give you a couple of examples. The Civil Rights movement in this country. It bordered on irrational. Why would
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you subject yourselves and your children and everybody in your community to the persecution and the hostility that the African-American people in this country did when they were trying to gain a sense of equality in a country that guaranteed it. It was because there was a vision. There was a vision that America should live up to its principles. There was a vision that everyone is created equal. People bet their lives on an unseen reality and they did things to help move that forward. Let me tell you another one closer to home: Our “One Family” emphasis. When Steve Edwards came to me and said, “I think we should turn on the heat for everybody in Floyd County who have had their utilities cut off,” I thought, “That makes no sense. That’s a big job. I don’t think we can do that.” But Steve believed and does believe that that is a vision given by God. By faith, if we will get up and do the things that God enables us to do, we can turn that dream into a reality. Faith is the turning of dreams into deeds—not just mental images and not just pie in the sky but things that can come true when God inspires us and we get up and do our part. Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. It is turning of dreams into deeds. Let me tell you one other place where you can see this. This is a little booklet that on the front says, “2002 Ministry Plan.” If you are a member of the church, you should have received this in the mail. Inside, there are a bunch of
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numbers. You would say, “That’s just a trick. That’s not a ministry plan. That’s the church budget.” Yes and no. Yes, it is the church budget, but let me tell you something. The numbers on these pages represent dreams for the year 2002. They represent the dreams that we think God has given us as a congregation and the dreams that we ought to accomplish. We have a dream so the children will have a foundation of faith. The children will learn certain basic things that they ought to know to build upon so that when they grow older in life they can know Jesus Christ as their own personal Savior. They can have a faith that really makes a difference. So in here, you will find $5,000 for a children’s camp. When we give that money, it helps turn this dream into a deed. It helps turn the vision that we have for children into the thing that helps children learn this faith. We have a dream that the youth will have a faith where they participate in the missions of this church so there is $4,000-$5,000 in here for a mission trip this summer. When we give that money, we turn dreams into deeds. We have in here $270,000 for missions. We support missionaries on the field; we send our own teams into various places; we provide benevolence for people in this community who have needs that they can’t find a way to solve.
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We have in here money for the support of the Hispanic ministry, support for a variety of ministries and places and schools and things that we do. We have turned dreams into deeds when we give our offerings. Listen to me. When people stand up in church and talk about stewardship or talk about the budget, this isn’t just about numbers and about “put your hand on your wallet; you better watch out; be careful,” we are talking about when we give our money it makes something happen. When we withhold it, there is some dream that doesn’t become a deed for God. I come before you this morning to say help us turn dreams into deeds. Help us see the ministries that have had impact on numerous lives. Let us do more. The theme of this year’s stewardship campaign is “In God We Trust.” It’s on the money. Is it in your heart? Do I trust enough to give to God and say, “God, take this and use it to make another vision, another kingdom, come true.” A few minutes ago, I was talking about faith and said it was not meant for our private consolation and that sense of comfort. You say, “I can get that.” I hope you do. Let me turn your attention to one other verse that has become important to me in the preparation of this sermon this week. This is from the Book of Isaiah. Isaiah 58:10-11: “And if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry, and if you satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in darkness, and your
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night will become like the noon day, and the Lord will guide you. Always he will satisfy your needs in a sun scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail” if you spend yourselves on behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed. It’s when we do these things, these works of faith, these things in the kingdom that help take the things that we can’t see yet and turn them into things that have invisible impact in the community around us, then we find ourselves strangely sensing the peace of God in our lives. But we cannot just go out and seek the peace and go out and try to find it and keep it and hold it to myself. It’s when we spend ourselves in this way. It’s when we participate in turning dreams into deeds that the peace comes. So what is faith? Faith is doing. It’s faith when we do and don’t see the outcome before us but we believe it is what God wants us to do. It’s when we take the vision and the dreams that God has given us and help turn them into deeds for the praise and the glory of Jesus Christ. Do you have faith?