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CONNIE: With fuel prices up and supplies down, many people are looking for cars that get more miles to the gallon. How does a billion miles to the gallon sound? Giving God’s trumpet a Certain Sound for 75 years, this is the Voice of Prophecy.

CONNIE: Hello, I’m Connie Jeffery,

LONNIE: and I’m Lonnie Melashenko.

LONNIE: Now Connie, just what are you talking about? You’re not going to try to sell me one of those carburetors you read about that multiply your gas mileage are you? I mean, I’ve heard of getting 40 or 50 miles to the gallon. But a billion miles to the gallon? You look pretty trustworthy, but I don’t think I’d buy a carburetor like that, even from you!

CONNIE: You can rest assured; I don’t have anything to sell, Lonnie. But we’re starting a new series of programs today, looking at the parables of Jesus. And as many Bible scholars have pointed out, when Jesus told a story, He often turned the world upside down. Or He invited us to turn our world upside down, and look at it from a different perspective. To see things the opposite way we usually do. And that can be a really energizing experience.

LONNIE: So you’re saying that just by reading some of Jesus’ stories, we can get new energy in our lives, and solve the energy crisis?

CONNIE: Well, not exactly that. But I was talking to our producer Ken Wade the other day, and he told me that about the time we started working on these programs about the parables, there was quite a bit of publicity about matter and antimatter, and how if you put the two together you get a tremendous release of energy. And Ken suggested that there’s a spiritual lesson to be learned here—something to do with the parables of Jesus.

LONNIE: Hmmm… Sounds like we’re getting a little bit Star Trekky here. Didn’t that science fiction spaceship Enterprise run on a matter/antimatter engine?

CONNIE: I think it did. The idea was to put and matter and antimatter together and capture the energy released to propel the spaceship.

LONNIE: Well, what on earth does science fiction have to do with the parables of Jesus?

CONNIE: That’s what Ken was explaining to me. This whole matter/antimatter engine thing may have been just science fiction a few years ago, but today scientists are starting to take it seriously. And it’s positively amazing how much energy they can get from just a tiny little bit of antimatter. Someone has estimated that you could travel all the way to Mars and back using just the energy in a fraction of an ounce of antimatter. Just collide the antimatter with matter, and let the sparks and spaceships begin to fly!

LONNIE: Okay, sign me up for an ounce or two of that stuff! I’ll never have to go to the gas station again.

CONNIE: Did you want one ounce or two?

LONNIE: Do I get a discount on the second ounce?

CONNIE: I’m not sure, but the best current estimate of the price of antimatter comes in just under two quadrillion dollars per ounce.
LONNIE: Wait a minute, two quadrillion dollars—that’s a 2 with about 15 zeroes after it I remember right, isn’t it? That’s a bit out of my range! I’m afraid I’m going to have to cancel my order, and suggest that we get back to spiritual topics for our program.

CONNIE: Well, I didn’t mean to lead us away from spiritual topics. There’s really a spiritual lesson hidden here, because when you collide matter and antimatter together, there’s a great release of energy. And the same thing happens when you bring Jesus’ teachings to life.

LONNIE: I get it. You’re using a parable to make a point. You’re comparing the energy in the antimatter to the energy in Jesus’ parables, because Jesus so often looks at things from the opposite side that the rest of us view them from. You’re saying that Jesus’ teachings are the antimatter of the spiritual world. And I like that! Taking the teaching of Jesus to heart really can give a whole new energy to life. It can give us that billion miles to the gallon, and empower us to do great things for the Kingdom of God.
CONNIE: I think you got the point of my parable exactly, Lonnie.

LONNIE: Well, thanks for sharing that with us, Connie. And friend, thanks for joining us for today’s program. We’re beginning a brand new series—looking at the parables of Jesus. We hope you’ll join us for all twelve of the programs in this series. Because there really is power available to us, as we commit our lives to the teachings of Jesus.
The parable we’re looking at today is found in Matthew chapter 7 and in chapter 6 of the gospel of Luke. It’s the parable of the wise man who built his house on solid rock. We’ll look at that in more depth in a moment, but right now let’s listen to a classic King’s Heralds recording of the song about the wise man and the foolish man.

“ The Wise Man And The Foolish Man”, King’s Heralds.

CONNIE: Wow! What a fun song.

LONNIE: I think we usually think of that as a children’s song, and it’s always fun to sing it with the little ones, and to go through the motions with the house falling flat and all of that. But Jesus didn’t tell the story just for children. It’s for us adults too.

CONNIE: Well, it keys right in on the message of the parable we’re looking at today, that there are all kinds of things that you can build your life on, or build your life around, but that the only really secure foundation is the Word of God.

LONNIE: That’s also the message found in a little book recently released by our sister ministry It Is Written. The book is titled I Want More, and it begins with a chapter on how to get the most out of God’s word—that is how to get the most out of your study of the Bible. The additional chapters focus on getting the most out of prayer, getting the most out of God’s guidance, and getting the most out of yourself.

CONNIE: As we open God’s Word to study today, we’d like to offer you a copy of the book I Want More as our gift. You can request a free copy by calling our toll free number, 1-800-872-0055. Be sure to ask for the book I Want More when you call, and we’ll get one out in the mail to you the right away.

LONNIE: And Connie, I’m sure you’ll be sharing our mailing address later, for those who prefer to write to us. Because we really do enjoy hearing from our listeners, and we especially enjoy it when you share your prayer requests and blessings with us.

CONNIE: That’s right; we’ll have that information later, but right now let’s listen to Lonnie’s message for today: How to Get a Billion Miles to the Gallon.

How to Get A Billion Miles to the Gallon
If only we knew what life is really all about, if only we knew what the world, the universe, is really made of, perhaps we’d live differently?

Let me tell you about a man named Al.

As a boy, he was anything but brilliant. He found school studies to be difficult. But that didn’t stop him from studying. In fact, it only made him work all the harder. Because learning came hard for him, he simply concentrated all the more on it. And apparently it worked.
He earned his first Ph.D., in philosophy, at age 24. Then he went on to study theology and earned a doctorate in that field the very next year. It took him another year to earn a doctorate in the field of music. And so by age 26, young Al had three doctoral degrees.

But he’d made a compact with himself five years earlier, agreeing with himself that he would spend the first 30 years of his life doing the things that brought him the most joy: that is, learning. After that though, he felt he ought to give something back to the world that had left him with the opportunity to study. He decided that at age 30 he would devote his life to service for others.

And that’s why, in 1905, Albert Schweitzer entered medical school. It took him seven years to earn his M.D. degree. He graduated from medical school at age 38. Now he had the key to a successful, profitable career as a doctor of medicine. Surely with such a background as his, he could become a physician serving the very elite of society.

But that wasn’t his plan. You probably know the story—how he spent the rest of his life—more than 50 years—serving the poorest of the poor in one of the most isolated mission stations in Africa. In fact, when he first went to the village of Lambaréné in French Equatorial Africa, in 1913, there was no hospital for a doctor to practice in. So he and his wife set up shop in an abandoned chicken coop, and in the next nine months they treated over 2,000 patients.

When I read that, it really warmed my heart. Because it made me think of H. M. S. Richards the founder of this ministry and how he first began his radio work in the chicken coop behind his house.

You know, when a man or woman has a mission, when they have a call from God that they are sure of, it doesn’t matter where they are, or what it smells like. What matters is the fulfillment of the mission that God has given them.

And so doctor Albert Schweitzer, with his brand new medical license, abandoned the opportunities that Europe could have presented to him and dedicated his life to serving the people of Africa. What made him do it? Throw away a life of great opportunity serving people who couldn’t afford to pay him for his services.

Before we answer that question, let me ask you: Did Albert Schweitzer throw away his life? He could have been a successful concert organist, traveling the world, thrilling audiences. Oh, he did do some of that—when he needed to raise funds to return to his mission station after World War I.

He could have been a world renowned author, sitting in a comfortable study at home, writing books that would wow the world with his learning. Well, come to think of it, he did find time to do that as well. Not from a comfortable study at home, but from the steamy jungles of Africa.

Or he could have just stayed at home in Germany and been a successful pastor. Ministering to the needs of his own nation.

So, in your honest opinion, did Albert Schweitzer throw away his life?

Few of us would actually say so. Because, try as we might, most of us will never accomplish anything on the scale of what Albert Schweitzer accomplished.

So, what was it that made Schweitzer such a great man?

In an article written the week before he died in 1965, Albert Schweitzer reported that the true secret to his success in life “lay hidden for me in Jesus' saying: ‘Whosoever shall save his life shall lose it, and whosoever shall lose his life for My sake and the gospel’s shall save it.’ ”

Did you catch that? The bedrock on which Albert Schweitzer founded his life of extraordinary service and almost superhuman success was the words of Jesus.

If anyone ever got a billion miles to the gallon out of the fuel of their life, I’d have to say it was Dr. Albert Schweitzer. And the way he was able to do that was to have a firm footing, a strong guiding principle, which kept his life on course and on its foundation.

You know, there are all kinds of guides to success out there these days. The self-help sections of bookstores have never been fuller. And I won’t deny that there are some good ideas in those books. But none of them has met the test of time like the words of Jesus. And that’s why we’re going to be focusing on Jesus’ teachings in His parables for the next twelve weeks. We want to bring these powerful words to you and challenge you—and challenge ourselves—to let these words really bump into our lives, and see what happens.

Like the antimatter we were talking about earlier, when the teachings of Jesus bump into the real world, energy is going to be released—lots of it!

One of the first parables in the Gospel of Matthew is the story of the two men who built their houses—one on solid rock, the other on sand. Let’s read it together, from Matthew 7:25-27:

“‘Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell — and great was its fall!’ ” (NRSV).

Those are strong words! Do you believe what Jesus said? “If you live according to My words, your life will have a firm foundation, but if you don’t, you’ll be building your life on a sand dune.”

I mean, do you really believe it? Do you live your life as though you really believe that?

Or are the words of Jesus just a little outrigger on your life? Something to consult on Sunday morning, or when there’s a special problem you need to solve.

Friend, let me confess to you—that even in this preacher’s life—I have to admit that the words of Jesus sometimes seem a little bit nebulous, a little bit flighty. Not something solid that you can build a life on.

By comparison, the things we see around us every day, the lumber and brick and mortar and stucco and concrete and steel seem so solid. You can build on these things; you can build with these things.

But words? Can you build on words? Can you drive a nail into words and expect it to stay? The solid objects around us seem so much more firm than mere words.

But friend, let me tell you something. The operative word here is SEEM. The things around us all seem so solid. But don’t ever try to persuade a particle physicist that they are. Because the scientists who know the most about what our universe is made of know that it’s made of almost nothing. That in fact the solid objects we see around us are made up mainly of empty space.

We’ve all seen drawings that represent the atoms that matter is made up of—with their solid nucleus and the electrons that orbit around them like so many planets around the sun. And maybe you remember from your high school physics class that your teacher told you that there’s a lot of space between the electrons and the solid nucleus. At least that’s what they taught when I was in high school. But in recent years scientists have discovered that there’s even more empty space in the atoms than anyone ever dreamed a few years ago. Let me share just a paragraph or two from a recent issue of Discover magazine. Now—don’t worry if you don’t remember everything from it, because you won’t be tested over this! But it’s fascinating for what it reveals about just what our supposedly solid world is made of:

You do not know what stuff is, you who hold it in your hands. Atoms? Yes, stuff is made of atoms. And every atom is a nucleus orbited by electrons. Every nucleus is built of protons. Every proton is - but there you reach the end of the line. Inside the proton lies the deep, unsettling truth: Stuff is made of nothing, or almost nothing, held together by glue, lots of glue. Physicists first began to suspect this in 1973. Lately it has been proved by experiment. . . .

A proton is made of three quarks, yes, but the quarks are infinitesimal—just 2 percent or so of the proton's total mass. They're rattling around at near light speed inside the proton, but they're imprisoned in flickering clouds of other particles—other quarks, which materialize briefly and then vanish and, above all, gluons, which transmit the force that binds the quarks together. Gluons are mass-less and evanescent, but they carry most of the proton's energy.

Well, as I said, you won’t be tested over this. But I wanted to share it with you because it’s a simple reminder, from a scientific perspective, that even the most solid things we see in this world are made up mostly of nothing. The hardest rock is really nothing more than a pile of sand held together by a lot of glue.

That’s something to consider if you’re one of those people—like me—who naturally tend to rely more on things we can see and touch and hold in our hands than on the words of Jesus.

And now here’s another thought to add to that: not only do scientists tell us that the things we can see and feel and touch are made up of almost nothing, now they tell us that even those things make up only about four percent of the universe. The other 96 percent is made up of what scientists call “dark matter” and “dark energy”—which nobody can see or feel or touch.

It kind of makes you feel like you’re walking on air, doesn’t it? When you realize that you can’t see most of what is around you, and that even what you can see is mainly open space.

Now let’s get back to the words of Jesus. “‘Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. . . . And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand.’ ”

We’ve had a bit of a physics lesson today. We’ve talked about matter, antimatter, and dark matter; protons, electrons, and gluons. But all of that is not the point of my message today. We’ve talked about these things in the physical world simply to turn our minds to the spiritual world.

Because our senses are so attuned to focusing on these physical things, it’s easy to let the spiritual slip. So I think it’s important from time to time to remind ourselves that the things we can see and touch are just a tiny percentage of what’s really out there. And they’re not worth putting our faith in—not when we have the words of Jesus to trust in. The words of Jesus are the very words that brought this universe into existence. When God said “Let there be light,” it was the words of Jesus that brought these things into existence.

Why trust in the created things when we can trust in the Creator of things?

And so I want to challenge you today—and to challenge myself today, as we begin this study of the words of Jesus, this study of His parables—take these words for what they are: something more solid than anything you can see or feel or touch in all the world. And build your life on them, for the words that Jesus speaks are spirit and life and truth.

Albert Schweitzer is just one example of a man who built his life on the words of Jesus—but it certainly seems that he got at least a billion miles to the gallon out of his life. And his life goes on in the work of thousands of others who have been inspired by his example. The Albert Schweitzer hospital in Gabon, Africa, continues to treat thousands of earth’s neediest people.

I want my life to be solidly founded on the words of Jesus. How about you?

“’Tis So Sweet To Trust in Jesus”, Adrian Westey, Jr.