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HANGING ON FOR DEAR
LIFE #5
"BUT HE SOUNDED SO SINCERE!"
You can follow an Internet road map with absolute,
down-to- the-millimeter precision. And end up completely lost if it's
a bad map. Spend a million dollars buying stock from the most sincere-sounding
broker in the world, and end up broke if he's a crook.
There's a story floating around pure fiction, as you'll soon see where
a guy is just going about his business, making a living. And all at once,
out of the blue, he hears an inner voice. "Sell your house."
What? "Sell your house." Over and over this clear but disembodied
voice inside his brain tells him to call Century 21 and put his house
on the market.
After about nine hundred repetitions of The Voice, he does so. He lists
his house, he sells it, escrow closes, and he's got a check in his hand
. . . much to the consternation of his wife and kids. Then The Voice speaks
up again. "Get on a plane go to Vegas." What? Vegas? "Get
on a plane go to Vegas." So he buys an airline ticket with his
$250,000 in his pocket, and he flies to Nevada. At McCarren International
Airport, The Voice tells him with great precision: "Get a taxi
go to the . . . Excalibur Hotel." Or whatever. He goes. "Go
into the casino, turn left and stop at the second roulette table."
He gets there and the table is packed with players. And The Voice remember,
it's an internal voice, of course, and he's the only one who can hear
it instructs him: "Take your $250,000 and bet it on Number Twenty-five.
All of it, every penny." With his heart in his throat, the man takes
his pile of cash and puts the entire amount on #25. A quarter million
bucks on #25, at 35 to 1 odds. And the little white ball goes around and
around . . . bounces around, skips around, and comes to rest in number
. . . seventeen. And The Voice from heaven says: "Rats!!"
Well, friend, that is probably the dumbest story we've ever told here
on The Voice of Prophecy, and I very carefully do so for just one reason.
Here it is: it makes a whole lot of difference what voice we pay attention
to in life. Do you agree?
We've been spending an entire week here just studying one verse in the
book of Psalms. In chapter 31, King David looks around his empire, and
he sees people listening to all sorts of voices all of them false. Really,
throughout the sorry history of the Children of Israel, that's about all
they ever did: heed false voices and chase after false gods. And he writes
in frustration:
"I HATE it when people cling to their useless
idols." And then the seven beautiful words directed toward the True
Voice, toward God: "I have decided to cling to You."
Now friend, here is my Friday question for you. On
what basis does King David decide that THIS Voice is worth clinging to?
Our empty-handed friend standing out in the parking lot of the Excalibur
Hotel has the same question. Why did I listen to YOU? he wonders in his
despair.
We remembered a fantastic soundbite, and it comes from one of our favorite
books: The Victorious Christian Life by Dr. Tony Evans. He writes about
"the shield of faith," which is a common Christian metaphor,
and makes this observation:
"Your faith will protect you, PROVIDED it
is the right kind of faith. You could have enormous faith in gifted preachers,
talented choirs, or your most zealous Christian friends. But that kind
of faith won't get you anywhere." And please mark down this next
line, because it is huge: "The INTENSITY of your faith is irrelevant
if the OBJECT of your faith is erroneous."
Did you get that? Friend, you can listen to a voice
out there with pure intensity, with slavish devotion, on a day-and-night
24/7 basis. But what if it's the wrong voice? You might choose to hang
from a tree limb, and put all your weight on that tree limb. What if it's
the wrong limb?
Back in September, 2001, Kenneth L. Woodward of Newsweek magazine had
a cover article entitled "A Mormon Moment." The 2002 Winter
Games were coming up in Salt Lake City, and this unique American denomination,
the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was going to be in the
spotlight. And here are 11 million people who say they listen to the "Voice"
found in the Bible, but also listen to the voice of Joseph Smith, who
claimed the angel Moroni told him about golden plates, and who, on Mount
Cumorah, near Palmyra, gave him tablets containing new truth. Should people
listen to this new voice, which teaches that people can become gods, that
we all pre-existed in heaven as spirit children procreated by God Himself
and His divine wife, that we are all working our way toward one of three
kingdoms celestial, terrestrial, or telestial?
Well, friend, that's why a person studies. You don't hang onto a rope
until you've tugged on it and determined how good a rope it is, and what
it's fastened to. That's why in everything we do here at the Voice of
Prophecy: this radio program, our Discover Bible Course, the books and
resources we send out we urge you: Get into your own Bible. Test all
things by the Word. Hold fast to that which is true. But do a lot of tugging
on that rope before you put any spiritual weight on it or especially,
any ETERNAL weight.
Ironically, just two weeks after that Newsweek article by Woodward, he
had another one entitled "A Peaceful Faith, a Fanatic Few."
And he wrote about how good, devout Muslims everywhere read the Quran,
and devour the ahadith, or "sayings and stories of Muhammad."
But there were those in the movement who also listened to men like Osama
bin Laden . . . and yes, this was in the Newsweek magazine which came
out just after the September 11 massacre in New York City and Washington,
D.C. So let's mark those words of warning down again:
"The intensity of your faith is irrelevant
if the object of your faith is erroneous."
I want to tell you this, friend: there comes a time
when we all have to pick a rope. We all have to cling to something. In
terms of eternity, you are going to put the full weight of your destiny
on something or SomeONE. What or who will it be?
We began this week telling a heart-rending story from Leadership magazine,
and I want to return there as we close. Marshall Shelley, who is a very
young-looking senior editor of that very magazine, has an article entitled
"My New View of God." Back in November of 1991, he and his wife,
Susan, had a baby boy named Toby. He lived just two minutes before succumbing
to fatal birth defects. And you mothers and fathers know that in just
two minutes, 120 ticks of the clock, you can already bond in such a way
that death is absolutely heart-breaking. But get this: just three months
later, February of 92, their little two-year-old, Mandy, died of pneumonia.
Talk about a double whammy of grief! I can't imagine it. And this young
father begins his article with a startling admission:
"I hadn't realized the cost of discipleship. God assigns some people
incredibly hard situations. . . . Living for God's glory is not for sissies."
But then he begins to write about "clinging"
. . . which is why we noticed this particular piece. What does it mean
to hold on in the darkness, to keep on believing when your tears and your
heart tell you there may be nothing beyond the two little headstones in
the cemetery?
Listen to this testimony, though:
"Before my children died," Marshall writes, "I considered
the [Christian] doctrines of resurrection and heaven pleasant but remote,
a bit quaint. NOW, THEY ARE CENTRAL AND STRATEGIC."
Now that he has desperately studied, and now that he
has no other rope to hold onto, Marshall and Susan are clinging to this
one big-time. Can you imagine how they clutch at the Christian doctrine
of resurrection until their hands of faith almost bleed?
"Many times now," he writes, "heaven seems so much more
substantial than earth." Can you conceive of it, friend, if all God's
people got to that point? "My wife, Susan, sometimes says, I have
one foot in heaven and one foot on earth.'" Then he adds: "We've
already sent part of ourselves on ahead and we understand better what
Jesus meant when He said, Where your treasure is, there will your hearts
be also.' Our hearts are continually drawn heavenward."
Friend, here in the last minute of this program, it's
not my place to choose your rope. I'm just a Christian preacher in a fairly
small Protestant denomination. But I want to lift up for your consideration
the God of Heaven, and His only Son, Jesus Christ, and the words of this
one Book, the Bible. That's pretty much it. From what studying and praying
I've done, I think Marshall and Susan's choice of a rope is absolutely
right on. They're clinging, and I'm right there with them, clinging too.
We're surrounded by a "great cloud of witnesses," as it says
in Hebrews 12:1, and the great giants of God through the centuries, brave
men and women of the Kingdom, tell us: "Here. Hold on to this. This
Rock holds; this Anchor is secure. We've tested it, and the intensity
of our faith IS relevant, because the object of our faith is the Lord
Jesus Christ and His guaranteed sure Word."
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