P.O. Box 53055    
Los Angeles, CA 90053   

IT’S YOU OR NOTHING

Let me set the scene for you. You and your husband are having a Sunday lunch at the Olive Garden – your usual after-church tradition. And as Tiffany, your waitress, brings you your house salad and your ravioli, you just get the impression: this kid doesn’t know Jesus Christ. I should say something. As we pay the bill, I should really find some way to give her the gospel message.

But how? How do you segue from “These hot rolls are just divine” . . . to “Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is divine too”? You see the dilemma.

Now let me up the ante. You and your husband go home; you have a relaxing Sunday afternoon. And then as you watch the local six o’clock news, you hear that a waitress at the Olive Garden was shot and killed in a drive-by shooting just as she got off shift at 4:15. And the inset picture in the corner of your TV is of your Tiffany. The 19-year-old kid who waited on you just hours earlier. You could have witnessed; you could have shared your faith . . . but you didn’t. And now – who knows? – maybe this Tiffany is going to be lost. All because of you.

Wow. Is that a fair story? Is that the way of it? We say telling others about God, sharing our faith experience with those we meet is important . . . but is it ALL-important? Is it life-and-death like this? We’ve used metaphors like the half-empty lifeboats on the unsinkable ship Titanic. Those in the boats didn’t go back to rescue anyone, and those they ignored drowned in the icy Atlantic. Is it possible for our spiritual inertia, our laziness, our private moments on the airplane where we burrow behind a Sports Illustrated magazine, to cost someone their eternal life?

Maybe you remember being thankful for a lost backpack in the closing scene of the film love story, Sleepless in Seattle. Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks are SO CUTE together; they just have to get together in the end. But there at the Empire State Building on February 14, she’s on the up elevator, and Hanks and that adorable little kid, Jonah, have just headed down. The doors open on her and close on the guys just an eyelash apart. That’s it! From where we sit, we can see that they’re doomed to be apart forever – missed it by that split second. Except, because Jonah left his backpack and his teddy bear, Howard, up on the observation deck, the father and son go back up, meet “Annie,” and they live happily forever after.

And Christians who watch have to wonder: are our lives simply one confusing maze of close shaves, near misses, and frequent failures, where someone we carelessly don’t intersect with goes skidding into spiritual oblivion? In other words, is it all on us?

I find both courage and comfort from a great Old Testament story that comes right before Job and Psalms. And you can understand how, sitting here at this microphone, my Voice of Prophecy team and I could be haunted by these thoughts constantly. Now, obviously, here on this Thursday you and I got connected up. I’m sharing, you’re listening and thinking about it all, and we praise the Holy Spirit for putting me here and you here. But what about those who, two seconds before we came on the air, hit the button and switched over to classic rock. Or to political talk radio. Or a CD. Or to silence. Or a meeting at work got out late, and they didn’t get into their car for lunch when they usually do?

Or – let’s play it out this way – we meet here in Radioland . . . but something that comes out wrong in today’s sermon turns you away from the Christian message for all time. You’re so mad at me for mentioning Tom Hanks that August 28, 2003 is the last radio sermon you ever hear. Could that happen?
In any case, here’s the Bible story found in the book of Esther. This young Jewish girl – although no one knows her background – has magically become the queen of Persia. King Xerxes is madly in love with his new bride. But the evil Haman is plotting to have the Jewish nation exterminated, wiped out. And faithful Mordecai sends an e-mail to his cousin in the White House. “You’re our only chance,” he says. “Fast and pray, and then go in to see the king on our behalf.” You remember that according to the laws of the king’s court, Esther couldn’t just crash a cabinet meeting with her own agenda. She had to be sent for. The king had to extend the golden scepter, otherwise even the queen could get a haircut that started with the neck. Christians everywhere can quote the two great lines where Esther agrees to go before the king, bravely saying: “And if I perish, I perish.” And the wonderful challenge by her cousin:

“Who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?”

In other words, It’s all on you, honey. Wear your cutest dress from Victoria’s Secret, and that expensive perfume I got you for Christmas, because the fate of the entire nation is on you right now. Do or die.

But you know, there’s a word of hope that comes right before Mordecai says that. Does even the sovereignty of God, the fate of His chosen people, rest just on the skill of Esther’s makeup ladies and on King Xerxes’ affability on a particular evening? Are the cosmic plans of heaven that fragile? Notice what Mordecai says to the queen:

“Do not think that because you are in the king’s house you alone of all the Jews will escape. For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place.”

In other words, Esther is God’s first option. He placed her there for this very purpose. But if for some reason, Esther doesn’t come through, is God going to allow His plans to be defeated? No! He has other ways and other heroes and other designs. God is going to triumph. We may fail, but God will not. And Esther had the privilege of being His first and His most successful tool for salvation.

Christians have debated for centuries – and will continue to, I’m sure – the question of whether Jesus could have failed in HIS rescue mission. Did He possess an impeccable nature? Could He have sinned? In a moment of human weakness, could He have stepped away from Calvary and left us to our fate? That’s not a question the Voice of Prophecy can solve with proof texts, but I can point you to verse after verse, BEFORE Calvary, where Jesus plainly said that He WAS going to triumph at the cross; He was definitely going to arise from the tomb on Sunday. He knew going in that He was going to do His Father’s will and redeem the human race. For one simple reason: our immutable God simply will not be defeated. His will is sovereign; when He wants to save a lost child, only that lost child’s free will can prevent Him from doing so.

So friend, where does this leave us? Are we off the hook? When church is over, can we simply go home and spend the next 167 hours doing our own thing, because God can move to Plan B and then Plan C and Plans D, E, and F to save little Tiffany down at the Olive Garden?

Well, let’s concede that it’s true God has many ways to reach Tiffany. He wants to reach her. His heart yearns to have her in His kingdom. So in terms of desire, He’s going to send as many ambassadors into her life as He can. If you fail, heaven will use other means. But let’s not ignore the reality that WE have been commanded to go to Tiffany. We’re commissioned to share our faith, not hide it.

And if heaven has to use some other way because we don’t go through the doors of opportunity the Lord offers us, two more things are true. First of all, we’ll miss the joy that comes from sharing, the satisfaction, the quiet feeling of “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.” Secondly, I do believe, as we’re taught in II Corinthians 5:10, that we’ll have to give God an answer for how we let Tiffany down, how we didn’t fulfill the missions He prepared for us to accomplish.

We’ve remarked before about the classic line where C. S. Lewis describes that holy thing, that potentially eternal thing which is our neighbor. They’re going to live forever! Hopefully in God’s kingdom, but perhaps they will be absent forever instead. And every day, every moment, Christians like you and me are nudging people in one of those two directions. Is it all on you? No. God has many ways, and He is desperate to get your next-door neighbor onto His salvation path. But He allowed you to be one of the many influences; there come those moments of rendezvous as you pay your bill after Sunday lunch. Those times you could give someone a hug and say a prayer . . . or just go out the door. And while God makes Himself responsible to reach His lost children, you at that restaurant are His specifically chosen avenue. As we’re gently saying in our radio series title, you are a hired gun for Jesus, an agent of His love and grace. Even today, you may yet be God’s Plan A for some lost soul. Why not be it? Who knows whether YOU art come to the kingdom for just such a time as this?