C210 2/14/60
© Project Winsome International, 2000

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"THE CHRIST OF THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT"
Dr. John Allan Lavender
Lk. 4:16, 19:45-46

Among the many references the four gospel writers make to Jesus' habit of participating in public worship, there are two which I wish to use as a scriptural background for this sixth message in the series on "The Greatest Life Ever Lived."

The first comes at the very beginning of his public ministry, immediately following his temptation in the wilderness,
"And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day . . ." (Lk. 4:16)
These twenty-five words pretty well sum up the feelings, attitudes and convictions of our Lord toward that clause of the commandments which some of us are prone to forget, "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy."

According to this text, Jesus never outgrew the need to worship or forgot his childhood training which surrounded the Sabbath with a sense of sanctity.

"As His Custom Was . . ."
What a plain but poignant commentary on the life of this one who so radically altered the history of the world. If ever there was a man whom it would seem could get along quite well without going to church, it was Jesus. Here was one who, according to Paul,
"thought it not robbery to be equal with God" (Phil. 2:6).
Yet he made it his habit to share regular encounters with his heavenly Father. And so,
"As his custom was.he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath."
Now let's not get bogged down in a debate over whether it's more correct to worship God on a Saturday or Sunday. Actually, both days are in a sense tied to the pagan practices of the past. Saturday was named for the ancient heathen deity Saturn. Sunday was originally set apart for the worship of the sun.

Likewise, both days have very deep religious meaning. The Sabbath of the Old Testament (which was Saturday) marked the completion of God's creative work. The Lord's day (which is Sunday) was instituted by the early church to commemorate the resurrection and marks the completion of his redemptive work.

And, because Christianity is primarily a religion of resurrection, we Christians have found it more satisfying to worship on the, "first day of the week," rather than on the last day. It reminds us of how the Son of righteousness arose with healing in his wings and with the light of God's glory on his face.

The really important thing, at least from my point of view, isn't when we worship God, but thatwe worship him, period. That we follow in the footsteps of our master who recognized the imperative need of a regular soul-searching encounter with the living God, and thus made it his custom to be in the synagogue on the Sabbath.

Now why do you suppose Jesus, who lived a busy, demanding, difficult life, thought worship was so important he was willing to make it one of the prime habits of his life? It strikes me there were at least three reasons, and one of them was that he recognized a very human need, shared by all of us.

The Need to Crawl Out of Ourselves Into God
Back during World War II, William Temple, the Arch Bishop of Canterbury, made a statement in a broadcast to America which struck many of his listeners as utterly ridiculous. He declared,
"This world, can be saved from political chaos and collapse by only one thing: worship."

He apparently was aware of the revolutionary tenor of that statement, for he forewarned his listeners that many of them would consider it, "outrageous."
"How foolish it will seem to some," he said, "to assume that going to church, saying prayers, singing hymns, and listening to interpretations of scripture could ever save us from political chaos."

"But it will," he cried and then went on to define worship by saying, "To worship
is to quicken the conscience by the holiness of God, to feed the mind with the truth
of God, to open the heart to the love of God, to devote the will to the purpose of God.
All of this, is gathered up in that emotion which most cleanses us from selfishness because it is the most self-less of all emotions -- adoration."

As we learned in our series of sermons on prayer last fall, "Adoration is a word which is rather foreign to many of us. We tend to think of worship as something utilitarian. Something we hopewill do us good. And it does! But the primary reason for worship lies not in the fact that it is good for us, but because in true worship we crawl out of ourselves into God and learn to love and adore him for himself alone.

This is the thing that made the worship of the wise men so wonderful. They came to Jesus, not to gain something from him, but to give something to him. And this act of adoration was so unusual it went down in history! Whoever heard of coming to God, for any other motive than to get something from him! And yet that is precisely what true worship is. It is coming to God in an attitude of loving adoration, not for what we can gain , but for what we can give of ourselves to him.

I'm so grateful for the little personal items you who have become "preaching partners" have begun to send to me from time to time. One of my friends who kept me in mind as she did her reading was a lovely little lady by the name of Mary Bulkey. Even though she and her family have moved away from Chicago, Mary still has us in mind. A while back she sent this little item in the mail. It seems she overheard her five-year old niece talking to one of her playmates about praying. In the course of their conversation, the little five-year old said,
"Well, you know, Susy, sometimes I'm just too tired to say my prayers at night. So I just climb into bed and say, 'God is great.'"
That's lovely, isn't it? And frankly, folks, I don't think the angel Gabriel could form a better prayer than that. "God is great!"

And my! How it must thrill the heart of God when, without pomp or pretense, we simply come to him with our love and adoration saying, "How great thou art. How great thou art!" For the primary purpose of worship is to bow down and adore him. For himself, alone! And not just for what he can and will do for us.

To be sure, our Lord is an ever-present help in time of trouble. He is a stream in the desert. A star in the night. A shadow of a rock in a weary land. He is all these things and more. But he is not just these things. He is not just our helper, not just our strength should we let our guard down, He is our Lord and our God as well. And we must never forget that!

God is infinitely worthy of our ardent, eager, enthusiastic love and devotion totally apart from anything that he may do for us. And because Jesus knew that, he made it his custom to be in the synagogue on the Sabbath.

The Power of Quietness
A second reason Jesus made worship a prime habit in his life is that he was conscious of the need for the power which only comes through quietness. The need to balance the pressures exerted upon us by this "whirling-dervish" of a world, with some kind of inner power and peace.

We are so very much like a fellow who tries to write his life story on a single piece of paper. It can't done, but he tries anyway. He writes out to the very edge of the paper. He leaves out all punctuation in order to save space, and, as a result, the page is so full of words pouring into other words it becomes a meaningless jumble.

We must quit trying to cram so much into our days. We must cease trying to write out to the very edge of the page, as it were. We must learn to punctuate our feverish activity with periods of quiet and contemplation which enable us to pull ourselves together. Which allow us a moment to tap into those resources within us. Which empower us to go on in strength, not in weakness.

As many of you know, by a kind of wonderful miracle, Lucille and I were able to acquire (or perhaps it would be better to begin to acquire) a little piece of property on a lake in the north woods of Wisconsin. We have affectionately dubbed it: "Shorewood Acres." It's a beautiful spot and I have come to love it very much. One of my dreams is to some day to make a trail through the woods and, at various lookout points place a small signs upon which are painted sayings which have been especially meaningful to me. If I ever get around to it, one of them will be a sentence from John Burroughs:
"I come here to find myself. It's so easy to get lost in the world."

Unfortunately, "Shorewood Acres" is about 400 miles away from here and I'm only able to get there once a year. But I still get lost in the world. My actions and attitudes often fall short of my ideals. When that happens I try to find a quiet place where I can be still, and pray a hymn or two.
When J. Sidlow Baxter was with us last fall he taught us was how to pray a hymn. To commit the words of that hymn to memory and to use it as a prayer expressing some deep longing of our heart. One of the hymns I have often prayed since then is this one:
"Spirit of God descend upon my heart
Wean it from care, through all my pulses move
Stoop to my weakness, mighty as thou art
And help me love thee as I ought to love.

I ask no dream, no prophet ecstasy
No sudden rending of this veil of clay
No angel visitant, no heaven-sent dove
Just take the dimness of my soul away.

Teach me to feel that thou art always nigh
Teach me the struggles of the soul to bear,
To check the rising doubt, the rebel sigh;
Teach me the patience of unanswered prayer."
I can't adequately describe how much those quiet moments have meant to me. But invariably, when they are over, I am reconciled with myself and with my God.

All of us need that kind of inner reconciliation. If our circumstances make it impossible for us to find some quiet place from time to time throughout the week, then certainly we ought to do as Jesus did, and make it our habit to be in the sanctuary on Sunday, so we can charge up the battery of our soul with that power which only comes through quietness.

Dr. Dwight Bradley has written a little gem of a book entitled Praying Hand. In it he gives this poetic definition of worship.
"Worship is a soul searching for its counterpart.
It is a thirsty land crying out for rain.
It is a man listening through a tornado for the still small voice.
It is a sheep lost in the wilderness pleading for rescue by the good shepherd.
It is a soul standing in awe before the mystery of the universe.
It is a poet enthralled by the beauty of sunrise.
It is a workman pausing for a moment to listen to a strain of music.
It is a hungry heart seeking for love.
It is a man climbing the altar stairs which lead to God."

Douglas Steere tells of an incident that happened when he went to Warsaw right after World War II. The city was in shambles. Ninety-five percent of the buildings were leveled to the ground.

As he walked among the ruins he came upon an old church with no roof and not much of the walls left. He started to go through what remained of the entry way when up at the front of the church he saw an old man with broken bricks and a trowel in his hand, building an altar. At first the sight stunned him. In a demolished city like Warsaw, it seemed so much more sensible to build a home instead of an altar. And then it occurred to him that the old man, with his bricks and trowel, was expressing in his own way the deepest and most urgent demand of our hearts. The need for some sacred sanctuary of the soul where, when disturbed and distraught, we can come to find strength and solace.

Someone has said, "The world at its worst needs the church at its best." And the church at its best is a church concerned not so much with theology and "kneeology." A church made up of a people who have learned what Jesus knew all the time. There is a power to be found in quietness that cannot be gained in any other way. People who have made it a habit to turn aside to the sanctuary Sunday by Sunday where, after the thunder and lightening of life, they are restored by the slim, sharp sound of silence.

The Need For Encouragement From Others
The third reason our Lord made participation in the worship of the synagogue a prime habit of his life was that he recognized the very human need for encouragement from others.

Dr. Albert Schweitzer, the great missionary to Africa, tells of an aged saint who attended his father's church. The man was as deaf as a post, but he was in his place every Sunday. When Albert Schweitzer asked him why. He said, "For the communion of the saints!" Even though he couldn't hear a word of the sermon or a note of the music, "he attended church anyway," says Schweitzer, "because he longed for the joy of Christian fellowship!"

This is a lesson many of us would do well to learn. For there is a value that accrues to our account totally apart from anything the choir might sing or the preacher might say.

In the New Interpreter's Bible, Dr. Ralph Sockman says, "Courage, to be sustained, needs the encouragement of others." And, as some of us look back at those times when we have felt the white heat of social pressure, we can remember how much it would have helped if there had been just one other person to take their stand with us for Christ.

Personal courage and spiritual buoyancy find it hard going in isolation. That's why our Savior made it his habit to be a man of the fourth commandment. There came a time when he had to stand alone, and he did! But it's my deep conviction that he was able to stand for God because he had previously learned to bend his knees before God.

And my dear friend, if you're going to stand firm in the face of Satan's onslaughts, if you're going to be a victor instead of a victim in life, then you, too, must become a person of the fourth commandment. You must not settle for just a fraction of that abundant life God wants you to have. You must not succumb to spiritual malnutrition by starving your soul in a way you would never dare to starve your body. You must learn with Christ to make worship a prime habit in your life. For the Bible says,
"They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up
with wings as eagles. They shall run and not grow weary. They shall walk
and not fall."

Cleansing the Temple
Earlier I said I had two texts today. What then should we say about the second half of our scripture, the story of Christ's cleansing of the temple (Lk. 19:45-46)? Just one thing. No man is an island!

As Christians we are inextricably bound up with one another so when we, as individuasl fail to be people of the fourth commandment, the whole church suffers and is weakened. And it seems to me that this is where the second half of our scripture lesson begins to shine like a sweeping searchlight upon the barrenness of our shabby souls, revealing the crying need for a great revival among the saints.

Oh, we're not money changers, or sacrifice-sellers, attempting to commercialize at the expense of the cross. But I'm afraid the church of today needs to be cleansed just as surely as the temple of Jesus' day did. As I said a moment ago, "The world at its worst needs the church at its best."

But unfortunately, as Samuel Shoemaker points out,
"The church cannot effectively get out into the world and change it, because
the world has already too effectively gotten into the church and changed it
instead. If the church of our day is to bring again to the world the faith and
answer it needs, something tremendous has got to happen to the church as we know it. For until something happens in us and to us it will never happen through us."

If we go on doing as we have done, and being what we have been, we shall go on producing as we have produced. And what we have produced is simply not adequate to meet the spiraling, critical, incredible needs of humanity. So this morning, in the name of our Savior, I call you back to a new commitment to the things that matter most. I challenge you to cry out with your pastor, "Oh God, revive thy church beginning with me." I challenge you to follow in the footsteps of your Lord and become a people of the fourth commandment.

The cleansing of the temple is now history, but the Bible says, "You are the temple of the Holy Spirit." Will you see to it that that temple is fit for the Master to dwell in? Will you put an end to all desecration of that sacred place? Will you allow him to come and drive out that which displeases him? I pray that you will. For if your heart becomes a house of prayer and is then linked with the lives of all the rest of us, our church will finally become the kind of a church it can be, and should be, a church after God's own heart.