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HANGING ON FOR DEAR LIFE #4

BIG TALK IN THE SUNSHINE

When it's sunny and blue, it's not that hard to talk big about faith. God-is-great-God-is-good and all that. When cancer hits, though, or your child is killed in a terrorist attack, or when you're just plain tired and discouraged, do we do like the Apostle Peter and chicken out on God?

Have you ever made a big public statement about how you were going to do this or that wonderful thing . . . and then about three-quarters of the way through, just couldn't live up to it? "Why in the world did I ever talk so big?" you wonder to yourself. "‘Cause this is much worse than I imagined." I have a friend who had some spectacular plans for how he was going to run 26 miles 385 yards in the Los Angeles Marathon. He was going to keep a steady pace, keep his eyes on the prize, not give up, not give in, not walk, not cry, and not quit. And he confessed to me later, tongue-in-cheek: "When I started that race, I was dreaming of a new Mercedes-Benz. (That was the first-place prize.) By the time I got to Mile #10 I was looking for a taxi instead. Along around Mile Twenty, I was desperate to find an ambulance." All the fierce determination in the world — "I'll fly like the wind; I'll run and not get weary" — evaporated like a soggy pair of socks along around Crenshaw Boulevard.

We're studying an interesting word all this week: "Clinging." What does it mean to "cling" to something — especially to your faith in God? Our theme text is in Psalm 31:6:

"I hate it," King David writes, "when people cling to their useless idols. I have decided to cling to You, [God.]"

And we say that with rather stout hearts sometimes on Mile Four or Five of our Christian marathon. But it's a different story on Mile 20, when God has allowed us to lose our job and our spouse and our home. I have a good friend who's written some outstanding Christian books. "I will cling to You, God" is a powerful theme in his books and television scripts. And yet, for years, when fatigue or jet-lag or distance came into his life, and he was many exhausting time zones away from those he loves, pornography slipped into his hotel room and just ate him alive. He didn't want to; he didn't intend to; he promised the Lord it would never happen again. But sometimes even the men of God find that they can cling to a good wife who's there in the room, and cling to the Lord during times of solid Christian service . . . and then find it difficult to do when they're overseas in Amsterdam in a hotel two blocks from the red-light district.
Over in Luke 22 we find probably the nastiest example of "clinging today, clueless tomorrow." Simon Peter, one of Jesus' three closest disciples, says to Him, with great gusto, on that dark Thursday night:

"Lord, I am ready to go with You to prison and to death."

Well, that's very nice, and even though we said, "on that dark Thursday night," it wasn't really dark YET. They were still in a comfortable upper room having bread and wine, with the warm glow of candlelight all around, and the satisfying presence of Jesus right there. But you can count down exactly 24 verses, and Peter begins his trilogy of denials. "I never heard of Him," he says again and again. "I'm sorry — I didn't get the name. Jesus of Nazareth? No, you must have me confused with some other Peter, ‘cause I've been fishing for a living my whole life." In one short evening, Peter went from clinging to Jesus to clinging to his Nike running shoes as he did his own Jerusalem marathon in the opposite direction. Torches and swords and spears will do that to a person, won't they?

There was a beautiful interview in the October 1, 2001 issue of Christianity Today, entitled "Bright Unto the End," where Wendy Murray Zoba revealed that the godly champion, Bill Bright, of Campus Crusade for Christ, has pulmonary fibrosis. "His days in the ‘earthly tent' are fading," she writes frankly, and she proceeds to ask Dr. Bright his thoughts on what lies ahead for him. And this legendary Christian responds:

"I've lost about 60 percent of my lung capacity and it keeps going down. One day I'll breathe my last breath, which is fine. I can say I've lived a pretty exciting life. But since it was announced to me that there is no cure for the disease, I've entered into a different relationship and a more wonderful intimacy with the Lord."

But you have to wonder something. Yes, Bill Bright has done great things for God over the past half century. He's been clinging to heaven's promises all these years, as he founded Campus Crusade, as he taught millions about fasting and prayer, as he helped promote the Four Spiritual Laws, as he helped get the marvelous Jesus film translated into 656 languages and onto screens in front of four billion people. But there will come that dark moment, so close to the end, when he can't breathe, when the sinister shadows lengthen. Will he wonder then if it's all true? Or has he spent his whole lifetime following a "cunningly devised fable"? Will he hold fast at that moment of transition, and still believe? He told Wendy during the interview:

"‘Eyes have not seen, ears have not heard, neither knows the heart of man what God has prepared for those who love Him' — beauty and magnificence beyond anything our little finite minds can imagine." And he adds: "The most important moment in anyone's life as a believer is the last breath, because the next breath is in heaven."

That's bravely spoken, but will it be as bravely spoken — for Bill Bright, or for any of us — when we draw that last breath before riding to the cemetery?
You know, friend, we find a powerful pairing of truths if we link the crucifixion story as told in both Matthew and Luke. There on that dark Friday afternoon, as Jesus Christ hung on the cross, you can read the desperate cry in Matthew 27:46:

"My God, my God, why have You forsaken Me?"

Isn't that chilling? Jesus, who for 33 years had felt His Father's presence so intimately that He repeatedly said, "I and the Father are one," could no longer FEEL His Dad. God was gone. The divine presence had slipped into the shadows of Golgotha. And in a way, this had to be. Christ had to feel OUR separation, the lonely divide that was really ours. A holy God cannot abide the presence of sin, and there on the cross, as Jesus carried on Himself the totality of ALL of our sins — the entire record of iniquity for this one wayward planet — God withdrew and permitted Jesus to feel the abject horror of complete darkness. Jesus had always clung to the presence of God, and now that presence was gone. What was there to cling to any longer? What could He hold onto, now that HE couldn't breathe either, now that He was suffocating, both from asphyxiation and from spiritual desolation? Could the Psalm 31 declaration, "I have decided to cling to You," still triumph in this darkest of hours?
Well, friend, it is absolutely incredible what happens next. If you read it in Luke, chapter 23, Jesus cries out into the void of nothingness, the blackness of impending hell:

"Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit."

To a God He cannot see, or sense, or feel, He still clings. He clings to the reality of His knowledge. He clings to the reality of the long-lasting relationship. "I don't feel You," He cries out, "but Dad, I know You're there."
And get this. Did you know that when Jesus gave this great shout of departing triumph, He was quoting Scripture? Did you know that? His last words before dying were a memory verse. And from where? Right here in Psalm 31. Verse six is where King David says, "I have decided to cling to You, Lord." And verse FIVE is word-for-word the cry from Calvary:

"Into Your hands I commit my spirit."

That is incredible. Friend, that is absolutely incredible. And how did this happen? It happened by Jesus forging a HABIT of clinging to God. He had done it, and done it, and done it for those 33 long years. Every day: prayer. Every day: fellowship. Every day: studying the promises. Reading Psalm 31 over and over, until it was in every spiritual chromosome in Christ's mind and body. Jesus didn't just say, "Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit" on the cross: He said it every day. Just as Bill Bright has done since coming to Christ in 1944. And I have no doubt that when this warrior for the Lord comes down to his last breath on planet earth, he will be thinking the same thing he said to Wendy Murray Zoba: "Vonette and I have been anticipating heaven." And he builds that "first love," as he calls it, "by [sharing] Christ with others. That can happen," he adds, "to everybody, every day."
Let me close by confessing that we tried kind of hard to set up this radio sermon with a little pun. We got out the dictionary, and had to stretch it a bit, but we noticed that under the word static — which is not usually our favorite word here on the radio — Random House's Mr. Webster says this:

"Pertaining to or characterized by a fixed or stationary condition."

Which was how Jesus was on that cross. He was in a fixed condition of trust in His heavenly Father. When He could sense Him and when He couldn't. In the darkness of Crucifixion Friday and the bright glory of Resurrection Sunday. To hang onto the reality of God was a static, fixed, indestructible thing for Jesus. In the most powerful of senses, then, we would humbly call it . . . static cling.