P.O. Box 53055    
Los Angeles, CA 90053   

SAMMY’S SALVATION

We had two very personal stories just fall into our laps recently — and I’m frankly stunned at how they so powerfully reveal the answer to the question we’ve been grappling with for the past week or so.  Because I have to openly admit: the question of faith and works, or grace vs. obedience, is one that just slips out of our hands.  It’s hard.  It’s agonizingly difficult.  It’s the core doctrine that led to the separation in the church, the Reformation led by Martin Luther.  Does our obedience earn salvation — at least a piece of it — or does Calvary cover everything?  And once Calvary DOES cover everything, does the Christian who has faith in God need to THEN obey?  And if he DOESN’T obey, is the free gift of Calvary undone or taken back?  Hard, hard questions, being debated in good Christian churches all around the world.

Yesterday we talked about going to a car dealership to get a new car.  And the big ad in the paper says: “No down payment!  No money out of your pocket!  Come on in.”  And yet we know that the MONTHLY payments are lurking in the shadows.  Those monthly payments — keep the Commandments, love your neighbor, practice good works, bear fruit — threaten to be our undoing.

So . . . let me tell you about Sammy.

Sammy is a six-year-old kid out there somewhere; none of us at the Voice of Prophecy have ever met him.  Even today, I couldn’t give you an address: city, state, or even country.  But early in this anonymous Oriental boy’s brief history, his family discovered that he had leukemia.  Without some kind of miraculous treatment, he would soon die.

Obviously the family tried everything.  But the treatments failed, and the options dwindled.  Finally it came down to just one thing left: a bone marrow transplant.  This little Sammy simply HAD to find a bone marrow donor out there somewhere, or it was soon going to be all over.

And then, all at once, it landed right in our ministry.  Because it turned out that one of our own team was a dead-on match for this boy.  The necessary blood factors — there are six of them — were perfectly lined up: six for six, like a Lotto winning ticket.  He had in his own marrow the necessary ingredients to save Sammy’s life.

Well, of course, he agreed to do it.  Believe me, there were a lot of prayers going up from our office on that Thursday morning, March 2, 1999.  I woke up several times, in the middle of the night, and just couldn’t stop thinking about it.

But let me tell you what some of us were thinking about in the midnight hour.  Sure, we were excited and thankful to God that He had arranged for this incredible opportunity to save a kid’s life.  That was so moving.  But there’s something more.

You see, ten days before the big operation, the marrow transplant, young Sammy had to undergo a kind of cleansing.  As weak as his immune system was, the doctors and nurses there at City of Hope Medical Center went in, and with chemo and radiation and all the rest, absolutely STRIPPED him of all his defenses.  They killed it all.  I don’t know if he was in an oxygen tent for the rest of the way or what, but for ten days, our little anonymous friend Sammy was completely BARE.  He had nothing left.  Then they told our staff member, the donor, “This is completely voluntary.  We can’t make you come in.  We can’t compel you.  We can’t force you.  But if you back out during these ten days . . . the boy will die.  Because he’s surrendered all other options.”

And you know, that was just about the heaviest thing any of us had ever heard.  Here was an act of total, complete, absolute, nothing-held-back faith.  This little boy had to put his entire LIFE, his everything, his future, into the hands of our brave staff member here at the Voice of Prophecy.  He was down to this one option, and no other.  Nothing left.

Well, friend, here’s where the message of the Christian gospel comes in.  You and I are fatally infected.  We have leukemia of the soul, and we’re marching toward the cemetery.  All human resources are exhausted; all other avenues have been explored and they’ve failed.  And then Jesus comes along, and He goes up on a cross.  He dies for us.  In a sense, He goes under the knife and He provides us with life-saving bone marrow. He, and only He, has the perfect six-for-six match we need — I could give you a whole other sermon on that, by the way.

And then the point is this: you and I have to commit everything — I mean, EVERYTHING — to this Person.  To Jesus and to His blood and to His Cross.  We cast it ALL at His feet.  “Jesus, You are all I have,” is how one preacher put it, and friend, it’s how I have got to put it today, and how you have got to put it today as well.  Today and every day.

What does this mean?  Real faith, where we put our EVERYTHING, at Jesus’ feet, means, first of all, that we’re given eternal life.  Forever.  Guaranteed.  Written in blood.  Nobody can take it away.

That bone marrow transplant, by the way — it required two procedures, but it finally took hold.  Today Sammy is alive and well and heading toward his seventh birthday, with 70 or 80 more to come, I’m sure.  Isn’t that incredible, wonderful news?  And with Calvary, our eternal life is even MORE sure than anything the City of Hope can offer.

But now here is the point about grace and obedience, or about down payments and MONTHLY payments, or about justification and sanctification, or however you want to put it.  Two things.  Friend, if you put yourself ENTIRELY in the hands of Jesus — we call that faith, pure faith — that involves trusting Him for salvation, and also trusting Him in the arena of following Him.  It’s not a case of “Hey, thanks, Jesus, for the marrow . . . now I’m outta here.”  No, to have faith means to follow.  To have faith means to obey.  To have faith means to bear fruit.  Because Jesus is our Savior, and Friend, and Mentor, and Guide, and Example, and Leader and everything.

And here, of course, has always been where we have begun to say, “Oh dear.”  Here is where our faith has begun to fail.  Here is where Catholics and Protestants have begun to sharpen their pencils.  Because this is where the monthly payments seem to come in.  In the following and obeying.

But what we have to realize is this — and this comes right from the experience of little Sammy.  Total faith, where we put ourselves COMPLETELY in the hands of Jesus Christ, means as well that we ALSO surrender to him in this way.  We accept His offer where He says to us: “I will help you to obey.  I will help you to grow fruit.  I will help you to love your neighbor and live a life of faithfulness.  In fact, in My own time and in My own way, according to the timetable that I and My Father, and My Helper, the Holy Spirit, have designed, I will actually take you all the way to perfection, to glory.”

We’ve used some marvelous Christian quotes before, like where C. S. Lewis writes about obeying “(quote) in a new way, a less-worried way.”  But it never really struck home before, until we all corporately went through the Sammy Story together.  You put your SELF in the hands of this kind Benefactor, and then the matter of obedience is one HE cares for.  The matter of Commandments is something HE leads you into.

What is there for us to do, then?  Friend, it boils down to the attitude.  An attitude of surrender, of LETTING Him help you obey.  That boy and his family turned to us and said: “You’re all we’ve got.  We GIVE our son into this final option.  Holding back nothing . . . because there IS nothing else.”  Do you and I have that attitude toward Jesus and His leadings?  Are we willing to follow?  True, we will often stumble.  We will often turn our own way, and then come lurching back.  We will often be tempted to try other pills, think about other potions and procedures, because human beings are not good at surrendering ALL.  But do we have an ATTITUDE of ALL, of saying, and meaning it:  “All to Jesus I surrender”?

Back in August, 2000, we all got an e-mail from a precious Christian friend, Bj Christiansen.  He was a former president in our Adventist faith community, serving in our Illinois Conference and then here in Southern California.  What a great man of God!  Then cancer struck.  And after many treatments and options explored, he wrote to tell us that he was finally discontinuing the procedures, which weren’t working, and was now entering a hospice program.

And notice this final line from a man of such great courage:

“We continue to trust in God’s GOODNESS.”

He enters a hospice . . . and trusts in God.  He had modern medicine fail him . . . and he trusts in God.  He’s gone now, but Bj looked into the gathering shadows, the twilight, and said: “God is good.”  Friend, THAT is total faith!  Faith to follow even in the darkness.

When it comes to living, or dying, or obeying and following, I think we all should sing this song: “Safe in the arms of Jesus.”