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FIRST & 10 SERMON SERIES

HONOR ROLE

JANUARY 31, 1999

ED YOUNG

Feel the gears, the slight shift as you press the clutch and move it out of fourth into fifth.  You experience that torque, those RPMs.  You are really cruising now.  I am not describing riding in an Italian sports car.  No.  I am describing reading the Ten Commandments.  This fifth commandment is a transitional commandment.  It bridges the vertical commandments with the horizontal commandments.  The first four, those vertical ones, had to do with our relationship with God or theology.  The last six are the horizontal directives and they deal with our relationships with our fellow man, the ethical aspect of life.  Thus our theology determines our ethics.

In our culture today it is very popular to have the ethical thing going on and then we let our ethics determine our theology.  But God says, once you put me at the rightful position in your life, then your ethics and behavior will change.  So this fifth precept is the connective commandment, a segue way, a sort of bridge linking the two sides together.

God, being God, could have chosen a number of significant relationships to highlight, but He picked the parent-child situation.  He picked our relationship with our parents.  He said these words in Exodus 20:12.  “Honor your father and your mother.”  God said it.  Why did God choose the parent?  Why was He into this deal?  I truly believe that our parents and this relationship we have with them is a critical cog to our connection with God himself.  But if you look around our society today, it is not popular to honor our parents.  Movies and sitcoms and songs paint parents out to be mumbling, stumbling idiots who have no clue about life.  And on top of that, the Baby Boomers and Generation Xers, or in this case the Blaming Boomers and Generation Excusers, are riding the pop psychology wave, that victim driven wave that shirks responsibility and shifts it to their parents.  We say as members of these generations, “My parents messed up.  They dropped the ball.  They pinned my diapers on too tight.  They painted my nursery the wrong color.  And it is because of them, of their problems, that I have a problem.”  Sound familiar?  Sound very 90s?  It sounds really hip these days to ride that wave.

We are talking about the Ten Commandments.  I am in a series called FIRST AND 10.  We have been hitting on the major priorities of life, as we start the first portion of 1999.  Today we are talking about the fifth commandment, honor your father and mother.  Like with the other commandments, we are going to lob the same three questions at this one.  The meaning, what was the meaning, what was God driving at?  The mentality, what was going through His psyche when He thought this one up?  The implication, the how, the so-what principle, the applicational aspect of this commandment.  The meaning, the mentality, the implication.  We need to consider these when we read the Bible.  Remember, the Bible was not given to us just for our information.  It was given to us for our transformation.  The Bible is not to be worshipped.  We are to take the words from God that He inspired certain men and women to write and we are to take those words and to live them out, to put shoe leather beneath them.  That is why we are studying these timeless principles.

Remember this.  When God penned these words, when He literally forged them in stone on Mt. Sinai with Moses, He had our best interests in mind.  God was taking on the picture of a loving and guiding and perfect parent.  So having said that, let’s look at the meaning of number five.

What is the meaning?  See the word honor?  We have to understand what the word honor means.  Some of you would immediately say, honor means respect.  Not quite.  You are kind of getting there.  I understand why you would think that because in our society, the word honor and the word respect are used synonymously.  But here it is a little bit different.  The word honor in the Hebrew is a stronger word, a more all-encompassing word.  To respect your parents means to hold them in high esteem but here, the honor thing means we are to take our parents seriously with our attitudes and our actions.  We are to take our parents seriously with our attitudes and our actions.  I like that.  It is a dualistic thing.  My attitudes and actions should reflect how seriously I respect and hold them in high esteem.

I am going to stop here and ask you a very penetrating question.  Are you honoring your parents?  Are you honoring your parents?  Well, right up front this commandment assumes a lot, doesn’t it?  Honor your father and your mother.  It assumes that we know our father and mother.  Some of us don’t even know our parents.  And furthermore, some of us don’t have that good a relationship with our parents.  So this verse assumes that we know our parents and know them well enough to honor them, to bestow them appreciation and love and all those things we are going to talk about.  Well, God understands that.  God understands that many of us have painful backgrounds.  Many of us have been hurt and abused and taken advantage of in regard to our parents.  Just to think about a Dad or to think about a Mom causes some of us to break out in a cold sweat.  It causes some of us to get really upset.  But I have got to tell you something.  There are no exemptions here.  There are no escape clauses here.  A bunch of attorneys didn’t draft this one.  I don’t care what your parents have done.  I don’t care how awful they have been, the Bible tells us to honor them.  If you have gone through abuse or pain, I am going to get into that in just a second because God has a tough word to your parents who hurt you.  God was driving at taking our parents seriously.  That is the meaning behind this directive.

God goes into the mentality, though, and He talks about the perks of this principle.  I love that God always shows His hand to us.  God says, “OK, here is what I want you to do and now I want to show you why I had this mentality.”  God did not want us to miss number five.  That is why He repeated it about four times in the Bible.  And I want to read to you the perks of this principle that God gives us.  You can follow along on the side screens.

Exodus 20:12.  “…that you may live long.”  That is the final part of the fifth commandment.  That is longevity.  I want some of that.  Deuteronomy 5:16.  “…that it may go well with you.”  So if I honor my father and my mother, what is going to happen, it is going to go well with me, go well with you.  That is stability.  So I have got longevity going on and stability going on.  I want to be stable, too.

Ephesians 6:1.  “Honor your father and mother for this is right.”  That is sensibility.  We are on a roll now.  Longevity, stability and sensibility.  And finally, Colossians 3:20, “…for this pleases the Lord.”  That is tranquility.  Longevity, stability, sensibility and tranquility.  I want to sign up for that action.  How about you?  I really want some of that.  And God says to us time and time again, that will be your life, that will be the result, that will be what you will reap if you get number five right.  If you hit this gear, you are really going to cruise, you will feel the torque, the RPMs because you are living within My guidelines.  You are going down My freeway.  You are within My guardrails.  And I love God for that.

But I know what is going on here.  A lot of us, I am talking to adult children now, have toxic tendencies and attitudes and rebellions going on.  We have taken this stuff and we have buried it in our tract of land.  We have buried it in places that most people can’t even see.  Yet it drives a lot of junk in our lives and we don’t really want to deal with it.  We like to have this toxic pollution going on beneath the surface.

A friend of mine in this church has a company that cleans toxic waste off large tracts of land.  The other day I went by his company and he told me how they pinpoint tract after tract after tract of land and go in and clean it up.  I want you to open your heart and your mind to this fifth commandment.  Challenged by God, Himself, I want you to allow God to take care of this pollution, this toxic stuff, the rebellion, the attitudes, the moments that you have dishonored your parents and allow the Lord to clean you up.  I want you to honor your father and your mother.

God is family friendly.  He thought the whole design up.  Go way back to the book of Genesis.  God was always dealing with the emerging family.  He dealt with Adam and Eve and all of their family.  He dealt with Abraham.  He dealt with Noah.  In this situation, he dealt with Moses.  He dealt with the children of Israel.  You have the prevailing family.  It is God’s divine structure.  For some reason, this structure supernaturally links us to God, Himself.  As we talked about a couple of weeks ago, most of us get our concept of God from our families.  That is how we understand and that is how we really know the God that we serve.

We talked about the meaning of honor, that we are to take our parents seriously by our attitudes and actions.  We talked about the mentality and the perks of this principle.  We are really starting to cruise now, aren’t we?  We kind of feel it getting in gear now.  We are cruising down the track.

Let’s talk about the application.  Let’s talk about the implications of number five.  How do we make this real?  Do you remember that I talked about God putting this whole thing in gear?  That is what I want to challenge you to do.  That is what we are to do for this commandment.  We are to go through and hit on five major gears.  We can’t jump from one to five.  We have got to hit number one, number two, number three, number four, number five.  If we skip around, we are going to forego the fifth, we are going to turn our backs on the fifth and we will miss out on the great stuff that God has in store for us.  If we don’t do number five right, it will mess up the very fabric and framework of our lives.  And a lot of people here are running into problems because they have neglected God’s word regarding this.

What is the first gear?  The first gear is the gear of love.  Jesus said it over and over again.  Specifically, He said it in John 15:10.  Check the words out on the screen.  “If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love.”  What was He talking about?  Abide in His love.  Well, notice here, if we keep the Ten Commandments, if we allow our theology to determine our ethics, we can abide in Christ’s love.  Abide in His love means that if I do life by these directives, I will do life with the favor of Christ on my existence.  Isn’t that cool?  Isn’t that an incredible deal?  Wouldn’t you like to live beneath and enveloped in the favor of God?  I would.

What does it mean to love your mother and your father?  Love is not just saying I love you.  When Jesus saw that we had messed up, fumbled the ball, committed cosmic treason, He didn’t just stand there and say, “Well, I see this cosmic chasm.  I love you.”  He didn’t just say it.  He did something.  He put it on the line.  He sacrificed.  He took the initiative.  He bridged the gap between man and God by dying a sacrificial death and He rose again and He offers us eternal life.  He did something about it.  So if I am going to get into first gear with my mother and my father, I have got to do something about it.  Yes, I can say I love you all day and night.  But I have got to do something, take the initiative.  I have got to put it on the line.  I have got to sacrifice.  Am I describing your relationship with your parents?  Am I talking to you, student?  Am I talking to you, teenager?  Am I talking to you, single adult?  Am I talking to you, Generation Xer or Baby Boomer?  Am I talking to you?  Are you really doing this love gear?  Are you?

Well, there is another gear we have got to hit.  After we have hit the love gear, we have got to hit the second one, forgiveness.  We have got to forgive.  And this is a two-sided one.  We are going to camp out for awhile on this one.  We are going to do the KOA thing, take out the tent, sleeping bag and roast some marshmallows.  When you talk about forgiveness, it is a big time, all encompassing, involved subject.  Here is what the Bible says about forgiveness.  Ephesians 4:27.  “Don’t give the devil a foothold.”  I love that text.  Is that clear, or what?  Don’t give the devil a foothold.  In other words, if you have unforgiveness in your spirit, if you are harboring hurt, if you are holding onto something, you are giving the devil a foothold.  He is the ultimate rock climber, human being climber.  He is just hanging there.  And if you have unforgiveness in your heart toward a mom or dad or single parent or whoever, you had better watch out because Satan is hanging on to your life.  The good news is, you can be released.  You can be cleansed.  You can let go.  Because the word forgive in the Bible means to send away, to be done with.  Isn’t that a great word?  Today, after this service, you can be done with it.  You sins and rebellions can be forgiven and forgotten.

In about seven weeks I will be 38 years of age.  After every birthday my parents IQ increases.  It is amazing.  They get smarter and smarter.  Those of us who are adults remember when we were teenagers.  We thought that our parents were brain dead.  It is part of being a teenager.  But they are smart now.  For the most part, our parents did the best they could with what they had.  They are not perfect.  They are not infallible.  But they did the best that they could.  If you have any kind of problem with them, if you are holding onto anything, any kind of unforgiveness way down there in the depth of your spirit, it is time to let it go.  It is time to come clean.

But some of you are saying, and I am talking to the group I mentioned earlier in the message, “You don’t know what I have gone through.  You don’t know what it was like growing up in my family.  You don’t get it, Ed.  You had great parents.  I had horrible parents.  There was abuse going on.  There was alcoholism going on, drug addiction going on, fighting going on.  You don’t get it.”  You are right.  I don’t get it because I am not you.  There is no way I can identify with you.  I can’t get on your same level.  However, there is someone who can and His name is Jesus Christ.  Jesus can identify with your hurt, with your pain.  Think about it.  When Jesus was dying on Calvary for your iniquities and mine, His best friends turned their backs on Him, people spit in His face, He was cursed, He was abused, He was tortured just for you and just for me.  So you can take your hurt and your problems and your pain to Jesus.  And I am going to tell you something.  God does not turn His back on what you have experienced.

Let me give you a very strong word you can hold onto.  Because you don’t have to get back with your parents.  You don’t have to get retribution.  Let God settle the account.  Here is what Jesus said in Luke 17:2.  “If anybody causes a little one to stumble, it is better for them to tie a millstone around their neck and have them thrown overboard into the bottom of the sea.”  That is pretty strong language.  Wouldn’t you agree?  So think about it.  Putting a big, old 400-pound boulder around your neck and being thrown into the depths of Lake Grapevine.  It would be horrible.  Well, Jesus said that doesn’t scratch the surface compared to what is going to happen one day to those who have abused and messed around with their children, with their little ones.  So, you don’t worry about it.

However, you are still called to release, to send away, to let it go.  You are still called to say, “Satan, get off of my rock.  Get off of my mountain, man.  I want to live clean and pure before God.  I want to release my parents.”   I don’t care how numbed out they are.  I don’t care if they are clueless about this whole deal, you are commanded by God to do it.

Satan has a lot of real estate in Christ’s follower’s lives.  Did you hear what I said?  Satan has a lot of real estate in Christ’s follower’s lives.  And you can always see the real estate that he owns because it has a sign on it, Unwilling To Forgive.  Stan wants you to have that sign, he wants me to have that sign.  Let’s right now take that sign, pull it out of our real estate and trash it, get rid of it, burn it.  Say, “God, I want you to take my entire real estate.  I want to have a spirit of forgiveness even to those parents who hurt and abused me.”

I told you we were going to camp out here for awhile, didn’t I.  Now let we just say a word to those who are living at home under the authority of your parents right now.  There is some release work, there is some forgiveness work that needs to be done in your life.  Hey, when was the last time that you walked up to your mom or your dad and said, “I am sorry.  I was wrong for having such an attitude.  I was wrong for my disrespect.  I was wrong for my rebellion.  Will you forgive me?”  When was the last time you did that?

Do you know what the penalty was for dishonoring your parents in the Old Testament?  Thank the Lord that we don’t have this going on now.  Hey, you dissed your parents, spoke to them in a condescending way, a sarcastic way…bop, it is over.  See ya.  But we don’t live under that deal any more.  It might cut the membership of our church in half!  It might wipe us all out.

When LeeBeth was eight years of age, she had an attitude problem for a couple of days.  She was belittling her mom.  It is tough to have children.  Some of you don’t understand because you don’t have them.  But you wait.  Once you have them, you will understand where I am going.  Lisa had had enough.  My wife said, “LeeBeth, don’t say another word.  Don’t say another word.  I want you to march upstairs to your room and I want you to do something.  I want you to ask God to show you how specifically you have been rebellious and disrespectful to me.”  She added, “Oh, by the way.  I want you to write out all the ways you have been disrespectful.”  The door closed.  LeeBeth was in there about an hour.  She came out and Lisa read the list.  Then she began to remind her of some things that she had forgotten to put down.  “By the way, LeeBeth, when you finish this list you will present it to your father over dinner.”

Three hours go by.  I drove home and hung around for awhile.  We had dinner together.  We were eating and having a good time.  I could tell LeeBeth was kind of zoned out.  I sense feel those frosty feelings between her and Lisa.  Then Lisa looked at LeeBeth and said, “Ed, LeeBeth has something that she wants to present to you.”  I looked at what she had written, the many items of disrespect and sarcasm.  I said, “LeeBeth, what do you need to do.  It is great that you wrote it up, but what do you need to do?”  She looked at Lisa and said, “Mom, I was wrong.  I am sorry.  I apologize to you and I apologize to Dad.  Will you forgive me?”  We both said yes and hugged her and kissed her.  And then my wife did something that I thought was incredible.  If you know my wife very well, you know I married way, way over my head.  Anyway, she took this list and asked LeeBeth, “What would you think if your dad and I put this list on the refrigerator with all your artwork for everyone to see?”  LeeBeth said, “No!”  Lisa said, “LeeBeth you know we wouldn’t do that.  I want to show you what we are going to do which is what God does every time we ask Him for forgiveness and do the release thing vertically and horizontally.”  She took the list and ripped it into little pieces and dumped it in the waste paper basket.  She just dumped it right there in the trash can.  She said, “LeeBeth, that is what God does.”  What a great example.  What a great illustration.

But I have got to say this to you children, this to you students, this to those who are living under the authority of your parents.  If you don’t do the forgiveness thing, if you don’t hit this gear, it is like you have this big old hulking sign on your refrigerator.  “Hey, I am disrespecting, dishonoring my parents.  I am messing up.  And I think I can get by with this bad list.”  Who are you trying to kid?  Who are you trying to fool?  This is the best way to go.  Keep short accounts with God and short accounts with the people mentioned in number five.

Love, forgiveness.  Now let’s hit the third gear.  Cooperation.  We are cruising now.  The car is going faster now.  One of the ways I can honor my parents is to cooperate with them in a spirit of love and in a spirit of forgiveness.  I am to have this attitude and this action aspect going on.  Are you cooperating with your parents?  After all, they were placed in your life by God, Himself.  God has a chain of command.  He has a flow chart.  He puts people in authority positions in our lives to mold us and to shape us into the kind of image bearers that He wants us to become.  He has that boss in your life for a certain reason.  He has that manager in your life for a certain reason.  He has that pastor in your life for a certain reason.  He has that coach, that teacher in your life.  It is always better to discover what the chain of command is, what the flow chart is and get yourself beneath it and involved in it and under it and your life will always go better.  We have got to be cooperative with our parents.

My children and I have made up a game called Supersonic Candyland.  No, it is not the normal Candyland.  This is Supersonic Candyland.  We use two Candyland games.  One is kind of trashed and the other is kind of new.  We combine them.  We have two boards, two decks of cards and the kids and I team up and we have some intense battles for the Young Supersonic Candyland Championship.  A couple of nights ago it was EJ and Laurie versus Landra and Big Daddy.  And we were into it.  We were rumbling.  It was intense and believe it or not EJs team got all the way to the end.  All that he had to do was to draw one more Candyland card with any color on it and they would get into Candyland.  It would be nirvana for them.  They would have the Young Family Supersonic Candyland Championship.  But guess what happened.  When EJ reached for that card, it was Molasses swamp.  He had to go all the way back to almost the beginning of the game.  Landra and I high-fived.  “Yeah, we got this one.”  See, we always teach sportsmanship in the Young household.  Landra and I were able to win the Young Family Supersonic Candyland Championship and we held this title for about a week.  Now we are no longer reigning champions.

After we ended this episode there were some tears and some tantrums going on.  That right, even pastor’s children have those problems.  So I said, “OK, let’s pick the game up.”  Well, Landra and I were doing it the right way.  EJ and Laurie, the losers, they were taking the figurines and cards and throwing them in the box like Roger Clements would throw.  I said, “Time out.  Time out.  I see that you are doing what I told you to do, but I don’t like your attitude of cooperation.  Your attitude and actions are not linking up.  Don’t throw the cards in there that way.  You are not doing what I told you to do with the proper attitude.”

You see we can kind of quasi and pseudo cooperate with our parents.  But I am talking about real cooperation.  I am talking about real love.  I am talking about real forgiveness.  We are to honor our parents not because of what they have or have not done, but because of who they are.

If you are a parent and your child is here with you in the worship center, I want you to cover you ears for a second.  “Hey, children, students, those living under the authority of your parents, I want to give you something that will change your family dynamic.  The next time your parents ask you to take out the trash, to make up your bed, to clean your room or clean up the mess from Supersonic Candyland, say, ‘I would be glad to.  I would be happy to.  I would love to.  It would be an honor to do this for you.’”  Talk about snapping heads.  Talk about changing the course of your family.  Third gear, cooperation.  I told you that if you want to do this honor thing you have got to love and forgive and cooperate.

The fourth gear, value.  We have got to value them.  Isn’t it something?  We are born dependent on our parents.  Then we become independent.  Then after the years roll by, our parents become dependent on us.  We are to value them in every stage.

I will never forget what happened a couple of years ago.  Every summer I lead a beach retreat with our junior and senior high students.  We were on the beach and a young girl walked up to me and said, “Ed, I have wanted to ask you this question for a long time.  I am always yelling at my Mom because…..”  I said, “Time out.  I don’t care what you are talking about.  If you are yelling at your Mom, you are wrong.  You are not valuing her.  You are not honoring her.  You are not respecting her.  You are not putting her in high esteem.  You are not seeing that she was placed there by God, Himself.”  Don’t talk to your parents sarcastically or flippantly.  Don’t make those faces or those head rolls or the eyes thing or the body language.  Don’t do that.  You are turning your back on number five.  Value them.  It is God’s flow chart.  It is God’s chain of command.

I have said this many times on this stage and I will say it one more time, children.  Read my lips.  Your parents are smarter than you.  I know what you are thinking.  You are thinking that just because you can turn your laptop on and access global information better than they can that you know what is going on.  Well I am here to tell you, they have experienced life on the rugged plains of reality and they know more than you know.  So at the end of the day, you have got to defer to them.  You have got to love them.  You have got to forgive them.  You have got to cooperate with them and you have got to value them.

Number five.  We are going to start to pull some Gs now aren’t we?  Appreciation.  We are to show our parents appreciation from birth until death.  I don’t see any difference between diapers and bedpans, do you?  We are called to honor them throughout their existence.

Front page Thursday in USA Today said this, “More than a third of elderly parents say their grown children have failed to help them in a time of need in the past five years.  But when asked the question, only sixteen percent of adult children agreed.”  Appreciation, honor, respect, love, forgiveness, cooperation, value.

You know when Jesus was dying on the cross for your sins and mine, bleeding to death, He did not say much.  But one thing He did say.  “John, take care of my mother.”  Talk about appreciation.

How are we to do this?  I will give you some quick suggestions.

1. Make sure that your parents needs are met. If you are an older child, make sure that your parents needs are met.  Make sure that they have food and clothing.  They might have to move in with you.  We are called to do this.  Make sure that their basic necessities are met.
2. Include them in special days, birthdays, anniversaries and even vacations.
3. Give them special things throughout their lives. I am talking about cards and letters and little knickknacks.  Do that for them.  That speaks volumes to them.  It is all a part of appreciating your parents.  Hey, students, parents, those living under the authority of your parents now, why not send them a card?  Why not buy them a little gift?  Why not make something that advertises and exhibits your love for them?  Why not?

One day we are all going to get that dreaded call.  The voice on the other end of the line will say, “It’s your Dad….  It’s your Mom….”  At that moment in time, a nanosecond, you will either hang your head in shame because you have turned your back on the fifth or you will hold your head high with tears and sadness because you have done what God wanted you to do.

It is not too late.  It is never too late as long as they are alive to put it in gear.  Put it in gear.  Because the torque, the RPMs, the Gs that you will pull for God, Himself, are truly and will be truly staggering.

THE UNTOUCHABLES SERMON SERIES

ABORTION

DECEMBER 20, 1998

ED YOUNG

Every time I deal with controversial issues, untouchables like racism, homosexuality and abortion, I intuitively know that groups have already formulated their opinion.  Some of you can’t wait to cheer me on as I slam-dunk the pro-choicers.  You want to sort of start the wave to start the fires of hell.  For you, it is the white hats versus the black hats.  Others here have come to church with the proverbial chip on your shoulder.  You say to yourself that your mind is made up on this issue.  No one will change it. Even God, Himself, won’t do it for you.  You know where you stand and you can’t wait to call the pro-lifers narrow minded, right wingers, people who are out of touch with reality.

Still others here are apathetic.  You have a whatever attitude.  You say that what a woman does with her own body is her deal.  That sounds so postmodern, so cool, so choice driven, doesn’t it?  But there are numbers of people here today, specifically women, who have been carrying around a dark secret for years.  And this secret, if the truth were known, has been haunting you like an ominous rain cloud.  You have had an abortion.  I want you to know something.  I realize that you understood what was on the docket today, yet you attended  Fellowship Church.  And I know it took boatloads of courage for you to walk through these doors and to sit down.  But you desperately want to know where you stand in God’s eyes.  You want to know what He thinks about what you have done, the choice that you have made.

Throughout this series I have challenged you to do one thing.  I have challenged you to listen with an open heart and an open mind.  I have challenged you to take your prejudices and presuppositions and put them aside and tell God to have His way with you.  God, I want to see your take on these untouchables.  So ladies and gentlemen, don’t listen with crossed arms or closed fists.  Uncross your arms, open up your palms heavenward and say, “God, show me the truth.  Show me the reality about this hotly debated topic.”

I have come to my stance through a lot of research and prayer and study.  I didn’t come to this stance by some pie-in-the-sky thinking, by just grabbing something out of the air to perpetuate the party line.  No.  I have done the research.  I have done the work.  It is kind of funny, isn’t it?  You have one camp of the abortion issue, say the pro-choicers, who are sincere about their position.  And pro-abortionists will sincerely counsel a woman to terminate the pregnancy.  They will do it based on sincerity.  On the other side of the coin, you have the pro-lifers.  They, too, are sincere.  They will sincerely counsel a woman who is seeking an abortion not to go through with it.  They will sincerely tell her to save a life that she can do it and it is worth nine months of her life.  Everybody is being sincere but who is sincerely right.  Somebody is sincerely wrong.

Just for a second I want to give you an exercise to do.  Just look at yourself.  As I am looking at myself, you know what I am saying to myself?  I am glad that I am alive.  I am glad I am here.  And because I am here, someone 37 or 38 years ago saw to it that little Ed was protected.  And I am glad about that.  And if I had had a choice in the deal, if I had had some leverage, I would have said that I choose life over death any day of the week.  So I am alive.  I am fired up about it.  I am jazzed.  I am juiced.  I am here and so are you.

Doesn’t it seem logical, just to use elementary reasoning, to do the same thing?  That is why I firmly and lovingly seek to protect the right of developing children inside their mother’s wombs.  That is where I stand.  I say that in a love-driven and grace-fueled way.  We must stand up and we must do whatever it takes under the principles and precepts and authority of God’s word, to protect the lives of developing babies.

I am going to do something different for the remainder of this message.  I want to share with you how I came to my position.  I want to take you on this spiritual and intellectual and relational journey regarding why I am pro-life.  I will share several particulars.  The first particular that led me to my stance is my Christo-centric orientation.  You see, the moment that someone bows the knee and establishes a relationship with God through Christ something happens.  Suddenly everything is redirected and reoriented.  Suddenly you place the Bible as a priority in your life and you funnel everything, every decision, every thought, and every word through this grid, through this authority.  And things begin to change.  You begin to see that life has a huge and heavy and high price tag on it.  You begin to realize that each one of us is made in the image of God.  We are tailor-made and we have unique agendas and purposes that God has only for us.  That is a cool thing.  That is a great thing.  It causes us to thank God with our talent, with our time, with our resources.  We are made in the image of God.

One of the things about the Bible is that it tells us in painstaking detail that God has always been there.  Theologians call this concept the omnipresence of God, meaning that you can’t shake God.  You can’t shake Him, He is right there with you.  God was present during conception.  God was present as you developed in your mother’s womb.  God was present during birth.  God was present during the preschool years.  Yes, the terrible two years.  Yes, in junior and senior high school, yes in college, yes as an adult.  And for Christ-followers, He is present with us throughout eternity.  And God so loves you and me, ladies and gentlemen, that He commissioned His only Son to live and to die a sacrificial death and to rise again just so we could have life.

The Psalmist knew all about it.  In fact, the writer of this classic book of the Old Testament got so fired up about it that he penned these words in Psalm 139, beginning with verse 13.  “For you created my inmost being, you knit me…”  Notice the word me, not a product of conception, not a tissue mass, you knit me.   “…together in my mother’s womb.  I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.  Your works are wonderful.  I know that full well.  My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together…..”  This Hebrew word woven together suggests our veins and arteries.   “…in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body…”  This means in the original language, a fetus or embryo.  “…all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”  That is the kind of God we serve, a God who has been there, a God who places a high price tag on life.

All you have got to do is thumb through the Bible, just in a casual way.  The Old Testament is jammed with directives protecting life, protecting us from violence, protecting people from becoming victims.  And at the top of the list in the Old Testament is this directive that says, thou shalt not kill.  God is saying for one human being to take another human being’s life is a choice that we do not have.  Let me give you a quick advertisement.  Beginning the weekend of January 2 and 3, we will start the New Year with a series of talks I am fired up about called FIRST & 10.  We are calling it “Values for Victory”.  It is the ten priorities that will transform every life.  I am doing a series on the Ten Commandments.

So let’s say you looked at the Old Testament and realized that God is really serious about life.  Then you go to the New Testament, and Jesus, that revolutionary, that master teacher, says stuff like, love your enemies.  He says things like turn the other cheek.  Jesus said to defend the defenseless.  He said to protect the unprotected.  I ask you, whom did He describe in this camp.  He challenged Christ-followers to protect widows, orphans, the mentally challenged and the physically challenged.  But one question keeps haunting me.  What group has no voice, vetoing power, plank or platform?  What group can’t say a word?  What group has no choice?  Developing babies inside their mother’s wombs.  The powerful words of Christ are so penetrating in Matthew 25:40.  “I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these, you did for me.”

Abortion, like racism and like homosexuality, is a sin that breaks the heart of God.  It is stunning when you realize that a woman makes a choice to have sexual intercourse with a man and then through abortion she will take any choice away from a developing baby.  It doesn’t make sense.  Somebody help me.  I don’t quite get it.  Yet in our secularized society, we have watered down all of the words.  I call it the semantics of sin.  We don’t call sin sin anymore.  It is kind of the S word.  It is not adultery; it is having an affair.  It is not homosexuality; it is the gay lifestyle.  It is not abortion, it is pro-choice.  It is not pre-marital sex; it is being sexually active.  I have got to tell you that my Christo-centric orientation is the big particular that has led me to my stance.  It has led me too lovingly and firmly, under the laws and principles of the Bible, to do what God wants me to do and that is to protect developing babies, developing children inside their mother’s wombs.

There is another particular and it is just the sheer amount of data that I have downloaded over the years on this topic, from a scientific framework and also from a rationalistic framework.  You know it is wild to think about the advances in research and technology.  It is incredible what we know now.  I went to the doctor a couple of months ago for my physical.  My physician was explaining to me about a new machine.  He said it was very expensive and that there were only a few of them in the world but that you could lie down dressed and that within ten minutes the machine could scan your entire body.  This machine can show you pictures, clear pictures, of what you look like.  It can show if you have a little tiny tumor or if you have some slight calcification in the arteries.  My doctor said that it could tell how many vitamins the person had swallowed that morning.  Can’t you imagine the technician saying, “Wow, Fred Flintstone.  There is Barney, I think.”

A couple of weeks ago I went to my high-tech dentist.  I had a filling that needed removal and replacement.  The technician said, “Mr. Young, you have the biggest mouth I have ever worked on!  There is so much room in there.”  Anyway, she put this machine in there and it started clicking.  I didn’t know what it was.  It wasn’t a drill.  After awhile, my dentist raised up my chair and told me to look to the left.  And I saw on a kind of side screen a before and after picture of my molar.  It was kind of like a tooth makeover right before your eyes.  Before, it was ugly, out of style, out of fashion, that silvery mercury-laden filling.  Now it was white.  Technology blows me away.  Well the technology that is available today was not available two decades ago.  What physicians and technicians can see now really takes them back.  They know now that a twelve-week-old fetus has facial expressions, arm and leg movement, thumb sucking.  We are talking about a developing child.  Eighty-five percent of women considering abortion will not go through with it if they are shown pictures of developing babies at the same stage as their developing child.

Would you take the life of a baby who is one hour old?  How about a day old?  How about a couple of weeks old?  Would you take the life of a baby an hour before it was to be born, a day, a couple of weeks before it were to be born.  You won’t hear this stuff from the political pundits and media spin-doctors out there trying to perpetuate their mentality.  Oh, no.  You will hear the language of confusion and illusion and oftentimes the language of intrusion.  I want to talk to you about this confusing language because it sounds so cool, so scientific, so with it, so right.  But when you dissect the terms, when you put them up against the backdrop of abortion, it is scary.

Have you heard this before?  Every woman has the right to choose what she wants to do with her own body.  That sounds all right.  Every woman, every woman?  There were 1.5 million abortions last year in the United States of America.  About one half of those aborted babies were female.  They were little girl babies, little women babies.  Seven hundred and fifty thousand dead female babies didn’t have a choice.  Don’t even go there.  It is illogical.  It doesn’t hold water.  Again we have got to go back to the language of illusion and confusion.  Her own body?  We are talking about pregnant women, correct?  We are talking about women who have developing babies housed in their uteruses.  We are not talking about one person; we are talking about two persons.  When you are pregnant, ladies, it is your body and another body.  You have got one set of brain waves.  The baby has another set of brain waves.  You have got one heart beat, the baby has another heart beat.  You have one skeletal structure; the baby has another skeletal structure.  So, if every woman has the right to choose what to do with her own body, it is not your body, it is the baby’s body.

Yet we just sit there, Americans, just totally numbed out.  “I believe it, Ted Koppel.  I believe it, Dan Rather.  I believe it, Wolf Blitzer.  CNN said it, I believe it.  Have you ever studied what those people believe?  Have you ever studied what most of them feel?  Have you ever studied their ideology, their educational background, their view of scripture, their view of God?  Have you ever done that?  It will shock you.  Now I am not saying that everybody in the media is that way, but a lot of them are.  They use the language of confusion and illusion.

Another term states that no one really knows when life begins.  We just don’t know, they say.   Well, biology students know.  I have a good friend who is an obstetrician.  He knows.  Definitely, pregnant women know.  In fact, the entire medical community will say that when the sperm meets the egg we are talking about life.  People know when life begins.

Where did we go wrong?  Where did the wheels fall off, when did we start to talk about human beings only as people who are seen?  I guess what we are saying is that when you can’t see someone, when you can’t see the baby, it is not a human being.  But when the child is born and you can see them, that means that they are a human being.  What is the difference between a little developing baby in a mother’s uterus compared to a little baby who has made an eight-inch journey down the birth canal?  What is the difference?  Eight inches?  Again, I wonder what has happened to us.

And then again, this week, I ran into a writer in USA Today, David Masceo.  He was talking about the 36 million abortions that have taken place in our country since 1973.  And here was his thesis for the entire full-page article.  If we hadn’t had abortion, if all of these babies had lived, talk about financial problems.  Our country would be in a tailspin.  Talk about crime, it would be horrible.  We won’t know what to do.  Talk about racial problems and tensions.  It would make today seem like nothing.  And this was an educated person.  Don’t you see how it devalues life, it cheapens our existence?  Don’t you see now how a lot of people today put the spotted owl and the anaconda and the brook trout on the same level as a human being?

Let’s have another one.  Every child should be a wanted child.  Now that sounds good.  If you are poor, if you have seven children and are living in a horrible part of town, you should not have another baby.  Every child should be a wanted child.  You don’t want that child to suffer.  OK.  You don’t want that child to suffer sounds OK.  So then we are going to kill the child to keep him or her from suffering.  Is that right?  Every child is a wanted child.  Those children who are unwanted are really up there for abuse.  But, read the data.  Since Rowe vs. Wade, child abuse has skyrocketed and we are talking about wanted children.

I will never forget what happened to me when I was on vacation two years ago.  I was in the Gulf area of Florida with my family.  I walked outside of the condo with a cup of coffee in my hand one morning.  I love the beach; I am a beach person.  I saw the sugar white beach and the turquoise water.  I was thinking about the trout leaping and the red fish running.  I saw the seagulls kind of hanging in the air.  But something stood out.  Something kind of rocked me in this picturesque scene, a bunch of ugly signs.  I walked up and read the signs.  One said, “Warning – breeding ground for the sea turtle.  Violators will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”  I am all for protecting the environment.  I am a big time fisherman and I always practice catch and release.  I pick up paper all the time.  And I believe that if you litter, you are committing cosmic treason before God, trashing God’s planet.  I love animals.  You know, I have dogs and cats and all that.  But let me get this right now.  We are throwing people in jail for disturbing the eggs of the green sea turtle, yet it is legal to take the life of a developing little boy or little girl?  It doesn’t make sense.

So, yes.  My Christo-centric orientation is a particular.  Yes, the sheer data that I have downloaded over the years is definitely a particular.  But there is one last particular.  The eyewitness account from women who have had abortions.  I have kind of a unique position in life because I have been exposed to thousands and thousands of people over the last ten years.  I have talked to a bunch of women who have had abortions.  If you have had an abortion, listen to me.  It is not the unpardonable, the unforgivable sin.  It is not.  There is a second chance.  There is a better way.  However, if you try to deal with it yourself, if you try to work it out with your own set of plans, you are going to live in a rut of regret for the rest of your life.  You will feel like life is caving in on you.  Come clean.  Call abortion what it is, a sin before God.  Confess it.  Take it to the cross.  Come clean with it and you can be cleansed and forgiven today, right now.

A couple of days ago this letter was in my mailbox.  I have permission to read it.  “My husband and I were a young self-centered married couple when we made the wrong decision to terminate a pregnancy because the time was not right.  After we became Christians, we asked and received God’s forgiveness and amazing grace.  I don’t think that we ever really forgave ourselves.  I heard a couple at the Fellowship Church give their testimony about a similar decision and it blew me away.  I thought that the secret was too dark and horrible to ever share out loud.  After the message that day I sobbed in the car.  It was not pleasant to look at an action so horrible in God’s eyes without being deeply affected.  Since that time I have selectively been able to share with others God’s healing in my life.  I recently shared with a group of women that were struggling with the guilt of their sin.  We read scripture and prayed together.  In another instance an unmarried woman was brought to me and I was able to tell her the real story of abortion.  It seemed like a quick fix for her but I told her that the repercussions would last for a lifetime.  I know there will be many, many women and men sitting in the auditorium who will be facing this sin in their life for the first time.  For many, it will be like unlocking the door to something they thought was tucked inside forever.  I will be praying for you as you bring the upcoming message.”

What a lesson.  If you want to talk to the lady who penned this letter, she wants to be available to discuss forgiveness, to discuss this sin with you.  There is another side.  If you call our church office on Monday morning we will get you together with her.  So, those ladies here who have had an abortion, it is not the unforgivable sin.

Let me talk to another group.  I know right now that we have some people who are thinking about abortion.  I have talked to you over the last couple of weeks and I know you are here.  Based on the particulars that I have shared with you, based on my relationship with God, I ask you not to do it.  It is not worth it.  First of all, it is not worth it because it is a sin before God.  The pain and guilt and alienation and separation aren’t worth it.  Don’t go through with it because it is a sin.

Number two; don’t go through with it because you are taking a life.  And on top of that, if you decide to have the baby, you are going to save a little boy or a little girl.  You are going to save someone who was tailor-made in the image of God.  You see, the adoption option is open and there are literally millions of men and women, husbands and wives, who have aching arms and aching hearts for a child.  They are infertile.  And if you do this for them, you can change the course of their existence and you can also save a life.  And who knows what that little boy or that little girl will become.

A close friend of Lisa and mine got pregnant before she was married.  This young lady faced abortion and adoption as alternative decisions.  She made a courageous move.  And a Christian couple took her in and when she had the baby she put him up for adoption and he is in a wonderful Christian home.  She, too, told me that she wanted to make herself available to anyone considering abortion.  So, if you are considering abortion, call the church office and we will put you in contact with her.  We want to help you.  We want to show you there is a whole other side out there.

The third group that I want to talk to about is made up of those of us here who loving and firmly seek to protect developing babies in their mother’s wombs.  I challenge you to get involved.  Write letters.  Become pro-active.  Maybe God will lead you to take in a woman who has decided to keep her baby, to save a life.  Maybe God will lead you in that realm.  And need I say anything about violence.  Don’t even go there.  Don’t become over zealous.

Fourth group has to be those here who are still pro-choice.  If you are pro-choice, we love you.  I love you.  Why?  Because you matter to God and because you matter to God, you matter to us.  But I think that you are off base biblically, intellectually and relationally.  I challenge you to study this issue with an open heart and an open mind.  I challenge you to really do the research.  Go to our bookstore after this service and we have a list of five or six books that you can study.  Study the Bible.  Talk to other people who have dealt with this issue.  Speak to women who have had an abortion.  Do those things and see what God does.

In a couple of days we are going to celebrate the defining moment in history, aren’t we?  We are going to celebrate the ultimate birth, that moment in time when God sent His only Son to be born of a virgin.  We will have this birthday party for Jesus.  I ask you, what if Mary, years ago because of the social stigma, because of peer pressure, had said that she would have an abortion.  What if Mary had made that choice?  I ask you, where would you be?  Where would you be?

CORPORATE MAKEOVER SERMON SERIES

MOTION SICKNESS

WHEN YOUR PROFESSION BECOMES AN OBSESSION

ED YOUNG

AUGUST 16, 1998

In my early twenties I led a group of college students on a trip to the Cayman Islands.  To show you how long ago it was, the entire cost for the trip, meals, lodging for five nights and six days, and airfare was only $298.  That was a long time ago.  One of the sponsors on the trip was Lee Maxie.  Lee is a take-charge kind of a guy with a unique one-of-a-kind voice.  Early one morning I will never forget what Lee did before our group of college students.  He stood before them with clipboard in hand and said, “OK, listen up.  You have the opportunity today to sign up for a lot of fun events like biking, parasailing, snorkeling or deep sea fishing.  So go ahead and sign up now.  Here is the clipboard.  Pay your deposit and we will get this show on the road.

Everyone made a mad dash for the clipboard and to pay their deposit.  Let me say something about Lee before I go on.  Lee has the ability to talk with confidence about a subject even though he is clueless.  Remember that.

After everyone had signed up, Lee began to review the list.  He saw that a number of girls had signed up to go off-shore fishing.  Six girls and four guys.  So Lee kind of smiled and said, “Wait a minute.  Just let me have your attention one more time.  I see a lot of girls have signed up for deep sea fishing.  Now girls, let me tell you something about deep sea fishing.  (Lee had never been deep-sea fishing.)  If you get out there in that blue water and you start getting sick, that captain isn’t going to turn that boat around.  You will be stuck out there.  So if any of you girls want to back out, now is your chance.”  Well, of course, the girls didn’t bat an eye.  They said that they wanted to charter their own boat, go out in their own craft.  Lee says, “OK, good luck.”

Six girls go out in one boat.  They had a wonderful time.  Four of us guys, including myself and Lee, were in another boat.  We had been off-shore for maybe thirty minutes and our little boat was being tossed and turned by six to eight foot waves.  The exhaust from the diesel engines combined with the odor of fish bait was all that old Lee could take.  I looked over at him and saw that with every swell, he turned a darker and darker shade of green.  He was sick.  I am talking about really sick.

Motion sickness.  It can be defined as the erratic movement of a boat, car or amusement park ride which gets our equilibrium out of sync, resulting in severe nausea.  We watched, with smiles on our faces, as Lee began to beg the Caymanian captain to turn around.  And then we began to mock him in unison.  “Hey, Lee, any of you girls can’t take it, the captain won’t turn that boat around.”  We were out for hours and later on, I did something very cruel.  I will confess it right here.  Lee was leaning over the side of the boat.  Having been off shore a good deal in my life, I walked over to him and said, “Hey, Lee, there is one cure for motion sickness.”  “What’s that, Ed?  I know you have been fishing a lot.  “Listen to me very carefully.  It is rubbing your back against an oak tree.”

Many of us in this place right now are being tossed and turned by the erratic movement of a different kind, the waves of work.  We find our vocational equilibrium out of sync and out of balance.  A lot of us feel like we are motion sick.  We feel like we are riding wave after wave as the currents of our corporate culture slowly take us out to sea.  We are exclaiming, “I’m going to stop this work tomorrow.  I can’t keep up with this pace anymore.  This schedule is tearing me apart.”  And these cries echo throughout our homes and our businesses.

Think about it.  With scaled-down structures and decreased numbers of workers and greater demands at a NASCAR-type pace, workaholic is real.  A lot of us are dealing with it.

I talked to a lady before this service, an executive, who said, “Ed, what do you say about me.  I am now doing the job of three people.  And it is about to mess me up.”  Motion sickness.

Technology is great.  I really love technology.  But there is a temptation in it.  We have the ability now to take the office wherever we go on this planet.  Even to the Cayman Islands.  Fax machines.  Cell phones.  Beepers.  Video conferencing.  The workday now is not clearly defined.  We do not know where it begins and ends.  It is sort of blurred.  So I have got to ask you this question.  Is the subject matter we are talking about today relevant?  I mean do people really become obsessed with their profession?  Is there such a thing as motion sickness?

Ask the question to a spouse who is constantly put on the back burner due to business ventures.  Pose the question to a child who rarely sees his parents during the daylight hours or maybe stands waiting patiently with a soccer ball under one arm or maybe a pom-pom in one hand.  Motion sickness is real.  It is factual and it can destroy and devastate and tear apart your life and mine.

I am in a series called CORPORATE MAKEOVER, CHANGING THE WAY YOU LOOK AT WORK.  And during this series I have made this statement before and I will make it again now.  Listen very carefully.  God, being God, could have created work as some benign and boring activity void of any productivity.  But He didn’t.  God gave us work as a gift from His sovereign hand and He wants us to use our unique gifts, aptitudes and abilities to get involved in our various fields of labor as we mimic His image.  After all, God is a God of work and He has created us with a capacity, a yearning for work.  But God, being God, knew that we would struggle with motion sickness.  He knew that we would struggle with wave after wave, as we are tossed and turned by the currents of our corporate culture.  That is why He talks to us about some oak tree stuff.  That’s right, throughout the pages of scripture, God has given us some oak tree advice.

One day, Jesus made a statement that snapped heads and dropped jaws.  Matthew 16:26.  “For what will a man be profited if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?”  Christ was asking whether it is good to spend four decades striving and straining to gain the world at the expense of losing your soul.  Yet, many highly intelligent and competent men and women, exchange world gaining for soul losing.  And finally, a lot of us are waking up.  Finally, our corporate culture is waking up.  They are seeing a linkage between our private and personal and professional lives.  For example, Peter Singe of MIT writes, “You can’t build an effective company on a foundation of broken homes and strained personal relationships.”  So, today, I want to spend the lion’s share of our time talking about the symptoms, the sickness and the cure of motion sickness.

Now I know a lot of you who need to hear this message are not really here.  You are holed up somewhere working.  Some of you might be here physically but emotionally and intellectually you are somewhere else.  Pay attention.  And if you know somebody who needs this message, pick up the tape later.  I think it will serve them well.  We are going to get God’s read on workaholism.

During my research I have come across a lot of symptoms and causes of workaholism.  I want to read a couple to you.  See if it fits you or someone you know.  The motion sick man or woman is perfectionistic, neat, clean and orderly, very punctual, intensely competitive, disciplined.  He or she craves respect and security.  They are extraordinarily self-willed, unable to relax.  They work long hours.  They usually keep their feelings to themselves.  They are frugal and persistent.  They have an unusual need to be right.  They despise indecisiveness in themselves.  They usually struggle with marital intimacy.  They are chronic worriers and have an exaggerated expectation of themselves and others.

I saw some spouse’s elbows moving.  I heard some throat clearing and saw some eyebrows being raised.  I saw some slow head turns.  You think that I don’t see that stuff from up here, but I do.  I think we need this message.

What are some symptoms, specifically, and what are some underlying causes of motion sickness?  Recently, I watched a workaholic flame out within walking distance of this church.  Now he is living out the rest of his life with a broken career, a broken home and a broken heart.  From the outside looking in, one would miss the cause of his problem.  You would think that you knew what was driving him, the tangibles, the cars, the clothes and his really cool corner office.  Surely that would be it.  Or maybe he just loved his work.  Maybe genetically he is just wired that way.  Surely that would be the reason.  But it’s not.  The true cause, the significant symptom that drives workaholism is something surprising.  Insecurity.  Workaholics, motion sick men and women, deal with insecurity and it drives and fuels all of the engines that cause them to overwork and over-strive and over-strain.

So picture a motion sick person riding wave after wave, being tossed and turned by the erratic movement of the corporate culture.  Their rationale goes something like this.  “Hey, I better do well.  I better perform because when I perform, people will tell me that I matter and when other people tell me I matter, then I will really matter.  Most motion sick people grew up in homes where love was conditional.  Many grew up in homes where a mother or father departed at an early age.  Many grew up in homes where one parent was an alcoholic.  When many performed or did something well, the parents may have said that was good but they needed to do better.  So as adults they are trying to hear the words they never heard as a child, you matter, you are good, you can do something, I love you, you are one of a kind.  And sadly, workaholics pass this conception to their family, to their children.

It is kind of cruel because workaholics are usually very successful and they can give their spouse and their children a lot of stuff.  How often has a spouse said,  “You are never at home, always working.  Can’t you spend some time with me?”  The classic, typical motion sick response is, “Women would give their left arm to wear what you have on now, to live in this house, to drive in this car, to be a part of this club, to take the vacations we take.  Don’t even go there with me.”

And then workaholics tend to give their children all of the gadgets and gismos and toys and stuff.  Yet the children want the parent’s time.  They want to know that they are more important than the next deal, the next account, the next acquisition.  I have worked with junior high and high school students and I have seen them just rebel and really go nuts.  More often than not, they are screaming and yelling for attention that the workaholic mom or dad is not giving them.  That is exactly what happened in the life of that man within walking distance of this church.

You see motion sickness is not just a 90s problem.  Go back to the book of I Samuel.  God warned a man who suffered with motion sickness time and time again about his problem.  God said, “Eli, you continue in this venture, you continue to act this way, your home is going to self-destruct.”  And God’s promptings and God’s words fell on deaf ears.  Just read the book of I Samuel and you will see what happened to Eli and his rebellious sons.

In Exodus 18, patriarch Moses suffered with wave after wave of work.  His Hebrew culture was slowing carrying him out to sea.  I can kind of picture Moses leaning over the side of the boat.  Do you know why?  Moses, like any typical workaholic, thought that he was indispensable.  He thought that there was no way anyone else could do what he was doing and he tried to handle all of the Israelite business by himself.  He tried to counsel here.  He tried to give economic advice over here.  He tried to settle a dispute over here, and a marital problem over there.  Finally, you won’t believe what happened.  Someone woke Moses up.  Jethro, not Beaudine, but his father-in-law, stepped in and said, “Moses, come on, you can’t do it all.  You are going to end up in the deep weeds.  You are going to end up with severe nausea.  Your vocational equilibrium is going to be out of sync and out of whack for the rest of your life.  You have got to draw away.  Moses, you have got to rub your back against an oak tree.”  Can’t you kind of hear him saying that?  The sickness and the symptoms of workaholism.

What is the cure?  What works?  What is the cure for this sickness?  I will take the same phrase that I gave my friend, Lee Maxie.  It is simply rubbing your back against an oak tree.  Because as I said earlier, God has given us some oak tree type verses in His word that will encourage us and challenge us and help us get our vocational equilibrium in sync and in balance and in concert with His will.  And by the way, I call this the RUB principle.  R U B.

R stands for refocus.  As I mentioned before, I have been off shore a lot.  I have never gotten seasick but I have been off shore a lot. An old salt is someone who has done a lot of work on boats and been on the ocean for a long period of time.  If you talk to an old salt, he will tell you that motion sickness is a problem of focus.  It effects the inner ear and gets you all messed up.  So they will tell you to focus on something that is stationery, something that is not moving, like the horizon line.   Or maybe, if you can see it, land.  They will tell you that if you focus on that, then everything will come into balance.  That is the same problem workaholics have.  They have a focus problem.  They can’t focus properly.  They are focused on their careers.  They are focused on performance.  They are focused on hearing that they matter from this group or that group.  They are focused on some reward or some award.  And God says, “Hey, refocus.”

There is only one thing that will change the course of a workaholic.  It is knowing that you are outrageously and irrationally loved.  There is only one person who can love you like that.  God.  God’s love can literally break this sickness.  It can break this problem.  Workaholics usually grew up in homes where love was conditional and they have a tendency to put these character qualities on the shoulders of God.  They see God as someone who gives them love conditionally.  They try to perform and perform and perform for God.  “Look, God, look what I am doing God.  Yet God tells us throughout the pages of scripture that He has loved us irrationally and outrageously.  Isaiah 43 says, “I have redeemed you.  I have called you by name.  You are mine.  You are precious in my sight.  I love you.”  That is what God says about you, motion sick man or woman.  You have been redeemed.  He knows you by name.  He has called you and He loves you.  When we come to that point, when we begin to refocus on that stabilizing fact about the God of the universe, suddenly things begin to fall into perspective.  Refocus.

When we refocus on the love of God, here is what happens.  Psalm 1:3.  “He (or she) will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water.”  Is that great, or what?  You want to be firmly planted by streams of water?  You want to grow roots that are deep?  Rub your back against an oak tree.   Refocus regularly.

U stands for unite.  I have a test for you.  You have to use the back of the seat in front of you and it will take a little work.  There is a cell phone going off now.  Don’t worry about that deal!  Anyway.  Now I want you to sound like a drummer, using the back of the seat in front of you. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap and then say “Huh.”  Hey, we have a rhythm problem here.  And you are supposed to say the huh, too.  Do it again.  Excellent.  Give yourselves a hand.  You finally got in rhythm and the rhythm was simply six beats and a rest, six beats and a rest, six beats and a rest.  The fourth commandment says that we are to work for six days and then rest on the seventh day.  We are to stop working and start worshipping.  And God built this rhythm of work in your life and mine and he wants us to get in sync with the rhythm so that we can gather together with the family of God.

God has given us the church as a place where we are to unite and know and love others.  It is for the public study of His word.  No Christian can be exempt from the local church.  Hebrews 10:25 says, “We should never forsake the gathering together of the believers in the local church.”  There is nothing like the local church.  It is God’s design to change the course of the entire world.   And when workaholics and when motion sick men and women and all of us come together and worship God, we begin to see priorities.  We begin to understand that God is first, if we are married, our spouse is second and after our spouse, our children and then our work and other things.  God, being God, knew if we didn’t have this time where we stopped working and started worshipping, we would get everything out of focus and we would totally mess up.  So we are to gather together for public worship.

We are also to have private worship and then we are to get together and unite with our families.  I want to ask you something.  How much time during the week do you need to spend to become a great spouse or a great parent?  How much time?  For me, I have got to be home at least four nights a week, to be an outstanding parent and an outstanding spouse.  I struggle with this a lot, but that is what God has shown me.  And I challenge you to build your marriage, to unite together as husband and wife.  As the marriage goes, so goes the family.  If I have said it once, I have said it hundreds of time.  Please do whatever it takes to bond and unite regularly as a husband and a wife.  Then as you work on your marriage, you begin to spend time and energy and unite with your children.  You eat meals together.  I don’t care if it is at home or at Sonic.  And turn off the television while you are eating meals together and talk, converse.  Don’t just eat and go.  There is something intimate, I believe even Biblical, about sitting down and dining together.  Have those meals together.

Also, parents, I want to challenge you to limit your recreational pursuits and your hobbies during the formidable child-rearing years.  I will never forget what Chan Gailey, the coach of the Cowboys, said before he spoke in one of our Mother’s Day services.  He said, “Ed, I love to play golf.  But when my boys were younger children, I limited playing golf so I could maximize my time with them.  I knew it was just for a season.  And now I can play some more golf.”  That was a great word to all of us, especially to those dealing with motion sickness.  Priorities:  God, our spouse, our children, our career.

Now it is easy to get these things inverted, isn’t it?  I would be lying to you if I said that my work has never encroached on my marriage, my family or my recreation.  The bottom line is that sometimes it will.  But I challenge you to only allow that to happen no more than 10% of the time.  Try to have your priorities right at least 90% of the time.  And set your priorities prior to the event.

Let’s go to B now.  B stands for break.  We have got to regularly break away from work, from the office.  We have got to limit the hours we work prior to going to the office.  This is an issue that I have struggled with in my own life.  Four or five years ago, God really helped me in this realm.  I tend to be a workaholic.  I tend to really deal with this stuff.  For example, one of the things that I have to deal with every week is message preparation.  This does not come easy for me.  It takes me between 25 and 30 hours to do the research, the writing, the preparation and the presentation of the message.  But I know that like a big wave, before every weekend it happens.  Before about 6,000 people, I have got to come up with a message that is Biblical, challenging, maybe a little humorous, a message from God.   Oftentimes I have got to be preached to first before I can preach to you.

About four or five years ago I would study and study and study.  I would tweak and retweak and rethink.  I was spending hours and hours, often at the expense of my family and even my health.  Well, as God began to deal in my life, I began to learn that it would be important for me to limit the number of hours I study for the message because I have so many other things I have to do as pastor of this church.  So now I have put a limit of about 25 to 30 hours on message preparation.  I know that when I start my workweek tomorrow morning, I am going to spend about 25 to 30 hours on the message.  After that I am going to walk away from it.  God has challenged me to do that.  I have got to help with staff issues, vision casting and other things.  And I am telling you something.  God has honored it.  So, if I can do it, inspired by the grace and power of God, so can you.  So make the break from work.  Settle in advance when you are going to break.

Also take vacation breaks when they are offered.  I sometimes laugh when people say that they have not had a vacation in seven years.  Of course, they look it.  Take vacations.  Let me tell you what they do.  This comes from a book called THE ART OF VACATIONING.  Vacations help you refocus, help you unite and break.  They bring in creativity, they bring in perspective.  Be careful of taking obligation vacations.  An obligation vacation is a vacation with your parents or with other relatives.  It is great to take breaks with them, but that should not be your vacation.  Your vacation should be with you if you are a single, or your spouse and/or children if you are married.  When you take a vacation, make sure that you are as schedule free as possible.  Some of you are saying, “Oh no, no schedule!  Come on now.”

Let me give you some extra words as we are talking here.  Also develop the art of saying no.  That is so hard for some of us to do.  Just say a simple no with no excuse.  Someone asks you to do something – no.  Someone asks you to speak here – no.  Someone asks you to go here – no.  You are saying no because of a bigger value behind the no, a bigger yes.  Maybe time with your spouse.  Maybe time with your children.  Maybe time serving in the church.

If anyone had the temptation to become a workaholic, to be motion sick, it would be Christ.  Think about it.  He wasn’t.   He lived in perfect balance.  He was always in sync with His work, His values and His purpose.  Yet you will see that after Christ did some intensive ministry work, He would always take breaks, wouldn’t He?  He would take long walks.  He might build a fire and make breakfast.  He would go fishing with His friends.  After working, after being emotionally, physically and spiritually drained, He would break and walk away.  Great words.  Wonderful words.  Relevant words to your life and mine.

So how about it?  Are you being tossed and turned by those erratic movements that cause motion sickness.  Rub your back against an oak tree.  Rub your back against an oak tree, the tree called the cross.

CORPORATE MAKEOVER SERMON SERIES

WORKMAN’S COMPENSATION

Investing Your Wages Wisely

ED YOUNG

OCTOBER 4, 1998

I rarely take the liberty to make a broad-brush, all-encompassing type statement.  However, due to data that I have received this week, I am going to go out on a limb.  Here goes.  Eighty percent of you are investing a good portion of your wages poorly.  As those words are settling in, some of you might be saying; “Come on, Ed.  Who are you trying to kid?  I know the markets are volatile, but give me a break.  I am a diversified person.  You should see my portfolio.  I am young but I have money in stocks and bonds and CDs and IRAs and even in real estate and gold.”  Yet, I would turn back to my opening statement.   Eighty percent of you are investing a good portion of your wages poorly.

Yes.  You listen to the financial experts, the bankers and the brokers and the accountants and the trust officers.  But they fall way behind, way, way behind the expertise of the ultimate financial strategist, God.  What does God say about your investments and my investments?  One day we are going to be audited, not by the IRS but by God, Himself.  He is going to look at your life and my life and see how we made our money, saved our money, invested our money and gave our money.  You see, I am called to tell you what God says about money matters, about worker’s compensation.

I can talk all day but at the end of the day, it is your choice.  I have got to let the chips fall where they may.  And the beautiful thing about the Christian life is simply this: God does not design us a robots to mechanically and methodically obey His every whim.  We have a decision, we have a choice.  We have got to talk about finances.  I have said it before and I will say it again, giving is talked about more than faith, hope and love in the Bible.  One out of every six scripture verses in the New Testament is about this subject.  A third of all Christ’s parables dealt with this topic.

Now some of you may say, “Ed, talk about the real problems, man.  Talk about drug abuse and divorce and illicit sex and the breakup of the nuclear family.”  Well, today, this message is for you because we are going deep.  I mean we are going to a subterranean level.  We are going so deep we might as well get out a backhoe.  That is how deep we are going.  And it is going to get dirty and messy because we will have to negotiate around a root, a root discussed by the writer of

I Timothy 6:10.  “For the love of money is the root of all evil.”  Not money, but the love of money.

Have you ever thought about the pet names we ascribe to this deal called money?  Cash.  Coin.  Fundage.  Dinero.  Scratch.  Mean Green.  We love to talk about it.  Money is not neutral.  It is not benign.  It is not just a means of exchange.  It’s power packed.  It is something that promises so much yet delivers so little.  A lot of us lie awake at night dreaming and scheming of ways to make it, to invest it, to save it, to protect it, and to insure it.  Money always beckons us, doesn’t it? More.  Just a little bit more.  I have discovered something over the course of my life.  Whatever you have bought, whether big or little, one day the shine will wear off, the newness will fade and a new model will be produced.  Money.

Let me go back to what I said earlier.  We have got a choice in the deal.  Jesus gives us a number of choices throughout the pages of the Bible.  I want to hit on several of the choices that we have concerning leveraging our money wisely and specifically investing it.

The first choice for all of us is that we can invest our money haphazardly or strategically.  A lot of us do the paper plate thing when we approach life.  You know those paper plates that keep the food separate, that keep your pinto bean juice from penetrating your hot roll.  Men are famous for approaching life in this manner.  We love to compartmentalize, build little fences and barriers.  “This is my family life.  This is my recreational life.  This is the marketplace for me.  This is my financial domain.  And God, you can have it all except the finances.  I want to keep that for myself.  I am not going to let that green juice infiltrate any other aspect of my existence.”  But God says, “Wait a minute.  I want you to be strategic with your funds.  I want you to save money.  I want you to enjoy the fruits of your labor.  But, also, I want you to give.  And when we give the entire plate of our lives to God, then and only then, can He fully bless us in every slice and every realm and every compartment of our lives.

Psalms 116:12.  “How can I repay the Lord for all of His goodness to me?”  That kind of answers the question for us concerning giving.  People ask me all the time, “Where should I invest my money?  Where should I give my money; to charities, to civic organizations, to education?  Those entities are good but another meal, another campout or another biology class doesn’t come close to God’s priority for giving which happens to be the local church.  There is no doubt about it.  The Bible is crystal clear on this one.  We are to give strategically to the church and when we do the church can utilize our funds in a strategic manner.

Don’t you see the mentality of God?  We have been talking about work.  We have been talking about the marketplace and all of the things that we deal with in it.  God has given us work and if we tackle tasks tenaciously, if we understand work as an act of worship, we will express our love to God while we are working.  But also, this worship continues because due to the compensation, the money made, the fruits of our labor, we can give and finance the bride of Christ, the church.  Thus, my work for God can finance the work of God and both can be acts that express gratitude to the Lord Himself.

You see if we just put our money where we wanted to, if God didn’t give us any advice, then we would just give a little bit here, a little bit there, a little bit everywhere and we would miss and turn our back and thumb our noses on the most important thing in the universe, the emerging of the local body of believers.  That is why God has given us His advice and expertise on giving.

We have a lot of different givers represented here now.  Some of you, when we pass the plate, will not give one dime.  And that is good. Every time we take the offering, whether I am leading or someone else is leading, we say, “If you are visiting with us for the first time, hold onto your wallets and purses.  You don’t have to give. Just chill and relax and listen to the music and enjoy the rest of the service.”  Then we say, “If you are a member, it is your time to give.  You can chill and relax and enjoy the rest of the service while you are giving.”  So some of us here are not going to give a dime today and that is OK.

Others give to avoid embarrassment.  We kind of feel bad because we have been here for awhile and we know people in our small group or our connection class or work with one of the ministries and they know who we are.  So we just put in a couple of dollars.  Some of us give like paying dues.  We say, “You know, my kid really loves Children’s Church.  We just got back from the Father-Son Campout.  I am going to give a little bit to the church.”  Or, “I love the Singles Ministry.  It has helped me a lot.  Here is a little bit.”

But the true essence of giving should be a generosity from the depths of our being.  Just for a second, picture Christ when they put Him on the cross.  He voluntarily opened up His palms, they nailed nails in them and He hung there for your sins and mine.  He did it voluntarily.  The moment you open up your heart to the Lord Jesus Christ, the moment He steps inside of your life, you begin to open up your palms, your hands voluntarily to worship.  You open up your hands in the marketplace and then you open up your hands with generosity.  No longer do you have that grip, that grasp on the scratch, dinero, the mean green, the cash and the fundage.  You are saying, “God, it is yours because I love You.”  We don’t give to get.  We give to give more.  “For God so loved the world that He gave…”  Think about your choice, about your decision.  Haphazardly or strategically?

The next choice is that we have is to leverage our wages either sporadically or consistently.  I Corinthians 16:2.  “On the first day of every week each one of you should tip God.”  Is that right?  Hello.  Is that right?  I don’t think that is right; tip God.  Change to the next slide.  Let me read this again.  “On the first day of every week each one of you should throw pocket change to God.”  We seem to have somebody messed up in our media area.  Maybe the third one will be the charm.  “On the first day of every week each one of you should set aside a sum of money in keeping with his income.”  That’s the right one.

“On the first day of every week….”, that’s week.  I want to stop at the word week.  Turn to your neighbor and say week.  God helps me every week in my job.  He does.  I don’t know how He does it but He does it.  He helps you too.  I need a weekly reminder that God is number one.  If I don’t or you don’t have that we will be messed up.  Here is what will happen.  If I don’t have a weekly reminder to give, after about seven days, eight days, nine days, ten days, I kind of lose focus.  Yet, when I come to church prepared to sing, prepared to experience the drama, prepared to hear a message from God’s word, suddenly money begins to come into perspective for me and into a proper focus.  I need this reminder weekly.  And that is why God has said that every week you have got to stop working and start worshipping.  You have to recalibrate and refocus.  And part of worshipping is giving.  On the first day of every week each one of you should set aside a sum of money in keeping with his income.  We should set aside that money weekly.

“Well, Ed, I get paid twice a month.”  Well, that is great.  So do I.  I challenge you to set aside a sum weekly.  Why?  Because every week as I come prepared for worship I will say, “OK, God, you are Lord.  You are number one.  I am opening up my palms to You just like you did for me on the cross.  And now I am being generous back to You, once a week as a reminder to me that you are, indeed, my Savior, my Lord, my friend, my forgiver, my master, my counselor, my redeemer.”  Sporadically or consistently?  We are to become consistent givers.

You know the Bible says that we are to love our enemies.  I don’t know about you but I don’t always feel like doing that.  Do you?  But the Bible tells me to.  I don’t like to do it though.  But I do it.  You know why?  The Bible tells me to.  Well, oftentimes, I don’t feel like giving.  That’s right, I am the pastor of the Fellowship Church and oftentimes I don’t feel like giving.  But I do it.  The Bible commands me to do so.  And I have been a giver, been generous and I will continue to be so because I cannot express to you the blessings that God has bestowed on my life.  I have never met a person who is a sincere Christ follower, who has attempted to live a pure and holy life, who has given consistently to the church, who has not been blessed.  I have never met that person.  So, if you have, I will be outside shaking hands.  Come by and tell me who that is because I would want to talk to that person.

Let’s talk about the third choice.  Should we leverage our wages sparingly or generously?  That is another decision that you have and that I have.  Obviously, God wants us to leverage them strategically, consistently and generously.  Malachi 3:8-10.  “Will a man rob God?  Yet you rob Me.  But you ask, how do we rob You?  In tithes and offerings.”  Wow, that is a scary verse, isn’t it?  The word tithe means tenth.  It first appeared when Abraham in the Old Testament gave a tithe to the High Priest Melchizedek.  It reappears time and time again.  It culminates in Malachi.

In a real way the show Real Cops could be filmed while we are passing the offering plate.  A lot of you are not investing your wages wisely concerning the local church.  Some of you are going, “Bad boy, bad boy, what’s he gonna do when they come for you….bad boy, bad boy, what’s he gonna do when they come for you…”  No, God, I promise you, I was going to give.  “Bad boy, bad boy…”  That would be a bad sight, wouldn’t it?  Look at it this way.  If we didn’t pay taxes we could be prosecuted.  If we didn’t pay our mortgage, we could be evicted.  If we don’t pay our dues at the club, we could be ousted.  If we withhold tithes and offerings, we are going to be judged.  We will be judged.  There will be a payday some day.

So a lot of us are robbing God because we are not bringing the whole tithe into the storehouse.  “….Test me in this and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room for it.”  God says to test Him.  Sometimes I will be washing the car with the hose and my kids come up behind me and they will bend the hose and stop the flow of water.  Then I hear them giggling.  Then I look into the hose and the water hits me.  Our Heavenly Father has turned on the flow of blessing and a lot of us, because we have withheld our tithes and offerings, put a bend in the hose.  God wants to bless.  God wants to empower.  He wants to use you and me to our fullest capacity but He can’t because we are withholding our tithes and offerings.  I am going to tell you something.  You begin to do this stuff and boom, the water will erupt all over you to such a degree that you can’t even take it.

II Corinthians 9:6-8.  “Remember this.  Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly and whoever sows generously will also reap generously….”  You see sparingly or generously, that is our choice.  “…Each man should give what he decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion.”

I have had an opportunity to tour a number of prisons.  I have talked to some prisoners about why they are there.  Almost all of them have an excuse.  They blame someone else for why they are behind bars.  “Well, you see this person didn’t do that.  And my parents…”  And they give a great many rationalizations.  You kind of empathize for a second and then you go, wait a minute now.  Every person that I have talked to has given me this noise.  Its kind of odd.  But a lot of us are robbing God and we are giving these same excuses to God.  Some of us say, “God, I will give when the big deal hits.  And the reason I am not giving now is because the big deal has not hit.  But once it hits, overnight, I will become generous.  You can count on me.”  Who are you trying to kid?  That is hilarious.  If you are generous, you can be generous over a little.  If you are generous, you can be generous if you are in the middle.  If you are generous, you can be generous if you have a lot.  Others say, “I don’t give because the church always talks about money.  They talk about money all the time.”  I did some research this week and over the last three years I have preached five messages on giving, from beginning to end.  I have mentioned giving in other messages, but five have been dedicated to the subject.  I used to kind of cower from giving messages like this.  But now, I have got to tell you.  This is one of the elementary commands of being a true Christ follower.  To talk about being a Christ follower and not talk about money is kind of like talking about NASCAR and not talking about speed.  Let’s talk about NASCAR racing.  You know, the cars look nice.  There are tens of thousands of people there.  But, you have got to talk about speed.  Christianity, you have got to talk about giving.

Here is another excuse.  “You know, I give a lot.  Do you realize that last year I gave $10,000 to the Fellowship Church.”  Here is your problem.  You have forgotten the relativity of your resources.  You think, whoa, I write a $10,000 and to this young lady here, that is a lot of money.  But to you, $8,000, $10,000 or $12,000 may be pocket change.  God is shaking His head and saying that you are robbing Him, that you are not giving Him the minimum worship requirement.  God asks for ten percent off the top of everything that we make.  He could ask for ninety, easily.  But He asks for ten.  So are you really giving a lot?

Here is the last one.  “I don’t want to give, God, because I am just worried.  YK2, the economy, the sky is falling.  I have got the sandbags ready, God.  My bags are packed.  I am on the rooftop already.”  Yeah, those things could happen.  But God will take care of you.  You see it is a matter of obedience.  It is just trust.

“For God loves a cheerful giver.”  A cheerful giver just laughs.  I have always imitated people.  When I was two years old I used to imitate a high school football star.  I have pictures of me in front of crowds imitating how he used to walk.  Everybody would laugh and say “Look at little Ed.  What a crazy guy.”  I want to imitate some laughs for you.  One friend laughs like this.  Hauuuugh.  So if the punch line of a joke is, because she said so…..he would go, becauuuse shhhhe saidddd so.  I don’t know why, he just does that.  The second one laughs like this.  If something is kind of funny, this is what he does.  Eeheeh.  But if something is really funny he will go eeheeh, eeheeh, eeheeh.  He will get on a roll.  My other friend laughs like this.  Heh, heh, oh gosh.  The Bible says that God loves a cheerful giver, a giver full of laughter.  So when the offering plate is passed laugh.  The word in the Greek is hilarious, we get the word hilarity from it.  “…and God is able to make all grace abound to you so that in all things, having all you need, you will abound in every good work.”  Here is what God promises.  He promises us blessings.  And if you withhold your tithes, it will block the blanket of blessing that God wants to put on your finances.  Also, it will build the local church, whether it is this church or another church elsewhere.  God has called the local church his bride.  That is how important it is to him.  And it will break the back of greed.  It will give a punch to the money monster and God will be glorified in the whole deal.

Do you know why I know that 80% of you are investing a good portion of your money poorly?  It is because our financial office told me that 20% of the Fellowship Church members are giving for the other 80%.  I will show you visually what this represents.  I won’t embarrass anybody.  Just chill for a second.  Now if I point to you in the audience, stand up.  OK, now these aren’t the ones who give for everybody.  These people are standing to visually represent the fact that they pay the way for everybody else.  That is pretty wild, isn’t it?  And we have an incredibly generous church.  We have a lot of people giving.  We have one of the greatest churches I have ever seen.  And I thank you for that.  But a lot of you out there are missing it.  Don’t miss it anymore.  Make the choice.  Please sit down.  Make the choice to do it God’s way because when you do, He is going to pour out blessings upon your life.  He will build the local church.  He will break the back of greed.  He will be glorified and your life will go from this level to that deep subterranean level where He wants you.