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KNOCKING ON HEAVEN'S DOOR #8
THE QUALIFYING ROUND
I remember back in October, 1999, on a Monday when
I was just getting on a plane to fly to Michigan . . . and I heard that
pro golfer Payne Stewart had been killed in a plane crash. THAT gives
you something to think about, doesn't it? Somehow the Lear jet carrying
him and four others flew uncontrolled over quite a part of America's heartland
before spiraling down to earth and crashing in South Dakota. You might
remember seeing pictures of Payne Stewart on CBS or ESPN; he was always
the one wearing the old-fashioned knickers and a tam-o'-shanter hat. Just
a few months before his death, he had won the U.S. Open for the second
time, dropping a 15-foot putt to beat Phil Mickelson.
Well, it's certainly a tragedy, and why do we bring it up here these many
months later? A 42-year-old man perishes so abruptly, so unexpectedly,
so much ahead-of-schedule. I mean, he was all slated to play in the Tour
Championship, the PGA's final event of the season, reserved for the top
30 players on the money list. And now he was gone.
It's been our study this week and last that all of us are looking at an
eternity — either with God or without Him. It's our opportunity, our decision,
to be saved or lost. And four words have marked our journey: "Jesus
is the Door." The testimony of the Bible is this: salvation is a
free gift we can have only through Christ. This Man who claimed to be
the Son of God also claims that He, and ONLY He, is the means by which
we can be saved. And at some point in a man or woman's life, they have
to take what we call Step Four . . . and walk through that door.
I suppose, for athletes in particular, it's so easy to say "maybe
later" to that kind of invitation. "When I retire, I'll think
hard about religion and God and all that," they say. "But not
now. I'm making too much money. These PGA tournaments run Thursday - Friday
- Saturday - Sunday. How can I commit any time to a church or to Christ
NOW? Maybe later." I remember a few years ago sharing a story with
you about a baseball player named Tim Crews. When a fellow player, a born-again
Christian, invited him to give his life to Jesus, Crews brushed him off.
"Maybe later. Maybe when I retire. Maybe when I hang up my glove
and cleats for good. But not now." Just a VERY short time later,
he was killed in a boating accident.
Imagine with me being IN the crowd around Jesus the day He said this,
which you'll find in John chapter five:
"I tell you the truth, whoever hears My
word and believes Him who sent Me has eternal life and will not be condemned;
He has CROSSED OVER from death to life."
We've already said that if Jesus Christ is a Door —
or a Bridge — then men and women who hear about this have to walk THROUGH
that Door. Cross OVER that Bridge. Because salvation is on the other side.
Not on THIS side — the OTHER side.
Now, friend, it's not my purpose to share a lot of scare stories about
people who heard about that Door . . . and said, "Maybe later."
And then had their lives snuffed out before they walked through. This
isn't a doomsday-procrastination sermon. But I do want to say it this
way: to every human being who lives, and who is confronted with this statement
— "I am the Door" — a decision, at some point, must be made.
Sooner or later. Sooner, by the way, IS better than later . . . for many
reasons. But at some point in your life, you and I are going to have to
give a response to this invitation. We must do SOMETHING about this Door:
either go through it to salvation, or stay over here with the crowd.
I remember a humorous little line from an old spoof/western entitled Butch
Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, dating back to the late 60s. Butch, who
heads up the Hole-in-the-Wall gang, has to fight against one of the members
of the little band of outlaws who wants to run the operation. And he looks
around for backers, for anyone who will support him against this coup
d'etat. Nobody. The men shuffle their feet in the dirt. So he fights against
the bad guy and beats him. Takes about five seconds. And immediately,
one of the boys, a shy, snaggle-toothed man, says: "I was really
rootin' for you, Butch." Which brings up the question: Well, where
were you when your loyalty might have mattered? Where were you when it
counted? The Pledge of Allegiance comes before the ballgame, not after
it's over and you already know the final score.
There's an essay in the book, Mere Christianity, by C. S. Lewis, which
goes to this point of expressing loyalty now. This is longer than we usually
read on the air, but let me simply share it with you because it's so very
insightful.
"Christians think [God] is going to land
in force; we do not know when," he writes. "But we can guess
WHY He is delaying. He wants to give us the chance of joining His side
freely."
And now a bit of "Jack" Lewis' World War
II flavor creeps in. Notice:
"I do not suppose you and I would have thought much of a Frenchman
who waited till the Allies were marching into Germany and THEN announced
he was on our side." That's true, isn't it? He goes on: "God
will invade. But I wonder whether people who ask God to interfere openly
and directly in our world quite realize what it will be like when He does.
When that happens, it is the end of the world. When the author walks on
to the stage the play is OVER. God is going to invade, all right: but
what is the good of saying you are on His side THEN, when you see the
whole natural universe melting away like a dream and something else —
something it never entered your head to conceive — comes crashing in;
something so beautiful to some of us and so terrible to others that none
of us will have any choice left? For this time it will be God without
disguise; something so overwhelming that it will strike either irresistible
love or irresistible horror into every creature. It will be too late THEN
to choose your side. There is no use saying you choose to lie down when
it has become impossible to stand up. That will not be the time for choosing:
it will be the time when we discover which side we really HAVE chosen,
whether we realized it before or not. Now, TODAY, this moment is our chance
to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance.
It will not last forever. We must take it or leave it."
That's quite an end-time picture, isn't it? If, day
by day, we determinedly avoid that Door, cementing into our very souls
a pattern of aversion to it, a route that takes us always in the other
direction . . . friend, we might come up to the last moment — plane crash
or no plane crash — and discover that our loyalty is locked in place.
We have, by a million small choices, made ourselves into a person who
CANNOT cross over from death to life. They always say: "Not to choose
— is to choose." And God holds back, giving us an opportunity, and
another, and yet another. But there comes a day when the play is over
and the Author walks out. There comes a day when one side in the battle
has won, and their troops parade through the streets. And when that day
comes, everyone's allegiance is already determined.
I'll have to confess that there have been times I thanked God for the
story of the thief on the cross. You remember how this condemned man accepted
Jesus as his Savior at the very last moment of his life . . . and Christ
accepted that. "You're a saved man," He quietly told him. So
yes, it is possible to do as it says in my friend Morris Venden's book:
"Catch the last trolley out." But I'll say this too: I don't
want to WAIT for the last trolley out. I don't want to meet Jesus at the
very end — the Friend who created that Door by giving His very LIFE for
me — and tell Him, "Well, here I am. NOW I'm with You . . . but I
sure got by waiting till the last minute, didn't I?"
To borrow back from my first illustration, I guess I'd say it this way:
I wouldn't want to wait until I got up on the 18th green, on the final
day of the tournament, before I revealed which flag I was playing under
in the greatest golf tournament of my life.
And how was it with Mr. Payne Stewart? Did he say a desperate prayer of
conversion as that Lear 35 jet plummeted to earth in its final death dive?
No. "He was a wonderful Christian," Rev. Jim Henry told reporters
after the tragic news. "He had Christ in his life, and somehow [even]
in his death. That brought a great sense of peace to his family in a difficult
and tragic time." After his recent win in the U.S. Open, Payne had
told everyone:
"I'm proud of the fact that my faith in
God is so much stronger and I'm so much more at peace with myself than
I've ever been in my life."
Mr. Payne Stewart — may he rest in peace — made his
choice about the Door at the right time. And that, for sure . . . is the
Play of the Day.
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