PEARLS OF PAUL
FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT – FAITHFULNESS
DR. JIM DIXON
GALATIANS 5:22-23, REVELATION 2:8-11
JUNE 4, 2000
Saturday night, January 16, 1993 was an evening that I’m certain I will never forget. I was home alone that night. My wife Barb was up in the mountains at a women’s retreat. Our son Drew was at a Christian camp up in the mountains. Our daughter Heather, who was 16 years old at the time, was babysitting, and so, I was home alone. At 8:15, the phone rang and it was Heather. She said, “Dad, I’m kind of concerned.” She said, “I just received a phone call, and it was a strange call. The man on the phone knew the names of the kids I’m babysitting. He seemed kind of threatening and angry. It’s probably nothing… ” but she said she was a little concerned. She asked if I would be willing to call her every so often just so we could stay in touch. I said, “Sure, Heather, I’ll do that. What’s the phone number where you are?” She gave me the phone number and I wrote it down. I said, “Now, Heather, make sure the doors are locked. If anything happens, immediately call 911, and call me whenever you feel like it, but I’ll be in touch with you.”
That was 8:15. A half hour later, at 8:45, I called Heather. No one answered. Well, I was concerned. The next 15 minutes, I called her on the minute, every minute for 15 minutes, and nobody answered the phone. At 9:00 that night, I called 911. I explained the situation. They said, “Well, what’s the address where your daughter is?” I said that I didn’t know the address, only the phone number. They said that was okay and just needed the phone number. They said they could find the address through the phone number. They told me to stay where I was and said they would check it out. I gave them the phone number. A half hour later, they called me at 9:30. The police called me. They said, “We’re here at the house. Your daughter is not here. The children are not here. Did your daughter drive over here?” I said, “Yes, she drove her car,” and I described the car. They said, “Well, the car is not here either. Would your daughter have taken these kids for a drive?” I said, “No way. They are two and four years old and she had already put them to bed. She wouldn’t do that anyway.” They said, “Well, this is a legitimate concern, and there may have been some kind of a kidnapping.” They said that they would put a search out on the car. They asked me to stay where I was and said they would be in touch with me.
Well, obviously, I had already been praying. I called my brother Greg and his wife Barb who lived, at that time, just up the street. They came down to the house, and we paced the house together as we were waiting. Greg said, “Where is this house?” I said that I hadn’t gotten it from the police and wasn’t sure where the house was. Heather had said it was somewhere off of Ridge Road in a nice area. Greg said, “There’s an area over there called Sundown that’s pretty nice.” He said, “I don’t want to just stand here. You need to stay here. The police have asked you to do that. Barb and I will go drive around and look and see what we can find.” Well, it was just a little while later, and Greg called me back. He said, “This is unbelievable. I have great news! We found Heather’s car. We went up to the house where her car was parked. We knocked on the door, and Heather came to the door. She’s fine. The kids are sound asleep and they’re fine.”
What had happened was that when I asked Heather for the phone number, she read the number on the telephone that she was using and gave it to me, but it wasn’t the right number. In fact, in that house, there were three telephones, and they all had different numbers and they were all wrong. So, when I called her back, I was calling the wrong number. I was calling a number where nobody was home. When I gave that phone number to the police, that led them to a residence where nobody was home. So, when the cops finally came to my house, I apologized. I explained the whole situation. I said, “I’m so sorry that I’ve led you on a wild goose chase.” The police officer laughed. He said, “We LOVE wild goose chases.” He said, “In a situation like this, if it’s a wild goose chase, that means there’s a happy ending, and we LOVE happy endings!”
I thought then, as I think now, how much we take the police for granted and how grateful I am for the public service they render. I mean there are federal police, there are state police, there are county police, and there are city police. Tens of thousands of police officers. All of them, for the most part, are faithful. The truth is, if there had been a kidnapping that night, the police would have done everything within their power to rescue my daughter and the children she was babysitting. If those kidnappers had been armed, that would not have deterred the police. They would not have fled. They would not have said, “Oh, they’re armed… Let’s get out of here!” because the police, you see, are, for the most part, faithful unto death. There is something noble about being faithful unto death.
You see, Christians are people who have been called to be faithful unto death. This was the message of Jesus Christ to the church at Smyrna. “Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life.” This is the seventh Fruit of the Holy Spirit, faithfulness.” The Greek word is pistis, a word which is translated into the English as pastis. This word generally means faith or trust but oftentimes this noun means trustworthy or faithful. That’s the meaning and the context of the Fruit of the Spirit, trustworthy or faithful. This is the call of Christ upon His people. This word is used in the Bible in the context of stewardship. It’s used biblically in the context of stewardship. To be faithful is to be a good steward. Of course, in the Parable of the Pounds, and in the Parable of the Talents, we’re told how Jesus Christ is like a king who has entrusted to His servants His property. He has gone away. He will come again, and when He comes, He will judge our faithfulness. He wants to say to us, “Well done, good and faithful servants. You’ve been faithful over a little. I’ll set you over much.” That’s what He wants to say to His people. That’s what He wants to say to you.
In the year 1808, a man named Salmon Chase was born in the state of New Hampshire. He grew up to fight the institution of slavery in the United States of America. In the year 1849, at the age of 41, Salmon Chase became a U.S. Senator. In the year 1856, Salmon Chase became the Governor of the State of Ohio. In the year 1861, Salmon Chase became the Secretary of the Treasury under Abraham Lincoln in his administration. In the year 1864, Abraham Lincoln appointed Salmon Chase the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. It was in that capacity that Salmon Chase presided over the trial of Jefferson Davis who had been the President of the Confederacy. It was in that capacity that Salmon Chase presided over the impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson in the year 1868.
In the course of his life, Salmon Chase sought the Republican nomination for President and he never received it. At the end of his life, he sought the Democratic nomination for President. He did not attain that either, but most historians view Salmon Chase as perhaps the greatest Secretary of the Treasury this nation has ever seen because, during the Civil War, during a time of tremendous cost, he kept America solvent. He established a system of banking that continues to this day. It was Salmon Chase whose efforts placed those words on all American currency, “In God We Trust.” Those words, of course, did not become the official motto of the United States of America until July 30, 1956, relatively recently, but it was Salmon Chase who had those words placed on American currency.
That motto, “In God We Trust,” is a great motto for a great nation, but, as Christians, with regard to currency, better words could be placed there. Better words than “In God We Trust.” Because for us, as Christians, we understand that what should be written on every piece of money are the words, “In Us God Trusts” because that’s the teaching of the Parable of the Talents. That’s the teaching of the Parable of the Pounds. That’s the teaching of holy scripture. God has trusted in us. He has entrusted His property to us. He has entrusted, into your hands, time, talent and treasure. What you do with it, what we do with it, this is what determines our faithfulness.
There is great treasure that Christ has entrusted to each of us, and, in each case, we’re called to be faithful. Your family is a treasure. Your wife is a treasure. Your husband is a treasure. Your children, they are a treasure. We’ve all been called to faithfulness. The gospel of Jesus Christ is a treasure entrusted to us. The call is upon us to take that gospel to the nations as well as to our community, and we are called to be faithful in this hour. The kingdom of heaven is a treasure. Jesus said, “The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field which a man found covered up. In his joy, he went and sold all that he had and bought that field.” The kingdom of heaven is worth more than anything else on earth, anything else in the world, and it’s a treasure entrusted to us. The Church, this church, Cherry Hills Community Church, is a treasure entrusted to us, and we will be judged for our faithfulness. Christ is the Judge. He’s the One who will determine your faithfulness and mine. He is the One who will evaluate us at the end of days.
In the year 1853, a man named William was born in the Netherlands. William was a failure. I mean, the only way to summarize William’s life was to say “this man was a failure.” By the age of 23, he had already failed at three careers. He had failed as an art dealer. He had failed as a language instructor. He had failed as a book seller. By the age of 23! Of course, throughout the years, he failed in love. He had fallen in love many times, but nobody fell in love with William. He was a failure. William loved Jesus Christ. He was a Christian, and he wanted to serve Christ. He thought perhaps the Lord was calling him to be a minister. He went to a school of theology, but he failed the exams. He could not be ordained. Once again, a failure. William resolved that he would never be ordained, but he thought that maybe he could still minister as a non-ordained missionary. He went to Brussels, Belgium to a missionary society there, and he sought to become one of their missionaries, and they approved him. They gave him an adequate salary and sent him into southern Belgium to the coal mines of southern Belgium to minister to the poor. William went willingly. He cared for the sick. When there were injuries, as often there were in the coal mines, William was always there. He fed the poor. He clothed the naked, and he preached the word, and the little church in the coal mines of southern Belgium where William preached, was jammed every Sunday as the people came to hear this unassuming man preach the simple words of Jesus Christ.
One day, an officer, an official from the missionary society in Brussels, came to the mission field to see how William was doing. This official found William living in a shack and wearing rags. The official said, “William, what are you doing with your salary that we are sending you?” William said, “Well, I’ve been giving it mostly to the poor.” This official from the missionary society said, Well, who told you to do that?” William said, “Well, I feel like Jesus has wanted me to do that.” The official said, “You look worse than the people you’re trying to minister to!” The official said, “It’s going to take our missionary society ten years to repair the damage to the image of the clergy that you’ve created while you’re here, and they fired him! Once again, William was a failure.
Three weeks later, he was still in southern Belgium, in the region of the coal mines. He was sitting on a log. He saw a coal miner walk by. This coal miner was carrying a heavy sack of coal, and he was bent over. William thought, you know, I’m going to try to sketch him. He took out an envelope and a pencil, and he began to sketch this coal miner. It was then that William realized how much he loved art and how much he loved to draw. And so, William began a new career as a painter. William, in the subsequent years, painted more than 500 oil paintings, but he was a failure. In the course of his life, he only sold one painting and that for a paltry amount. A total failure.
As the years passed, his epilepsy worsened. That was a time when people didn’t understand epilepsy. Some people said William was demon possessed. In the last years of his life, William began to experience deep depressions which alternated with times of extreme energy and productivity. He was in and out of institutions. In the year 1890, when William was only 37 years old in the midst of a deep depression, William committed suicide, taking his own life. Today, of course, the paintings of William are extremely valuable, and William is considered to be one of the greatest painters in the history of the world because his full name was Vincent William Van Gogh.
Historians today, both religious and secular, are struggling to evaluate the life of Vincent William Van Gogh. Was he a frustrated Christian saint? Or was he a deeply neurotic and troubled human being? Or was it some kind of mixture of the two? But, you see, it’s not for historians, religious or secular, to judge the life of Vincent William Van Gogh. Only Jesus Christ can do that. Only Jesus Christ can judge a life. Only Jesus Christ can judge your life. Only Jesus Christ can judge my life. He alone, and He will judge our faithfulness. We are saved by grace through faith, but we are judged for our faithfulness. Christ knows your thoughts. He knows your heart. He knows your every action. He knows what He’s entrusted to you. He knows your stewardship, and He is the Judge.
We come to communion this morning, and we come grateful for His grace and for His mercy, but we also come committing ourselves anew to faithfulness. I know many of you, in recent weeks, have gone to see the movie “Gladiator.” Barb and I went to see that movie just a few weeks ago starring Russell Crowe. In that movie, Russell Crowe plays the part of Maximus, a general in the service of Marcus Aurelius who became a gladiator during the reign of Commodus. Historians tell us there never was a Maximus. There never was a gladiator named Maximus. There never was a general named Maximus, but there were many gladiators and there were a few generals as well. In the zenith of Rome’s power, when the empire was at its most exalted height, there were thirty generals in the Roman Empire. Each general commanded a legion, a legion of 6,000 men. Each member of each Roman legion was a legionnaire, and each legionnaire had made a sacred oath to be faithful to Rome, to the Emperor, and to the Empire unto death. The Romans called that sacred oath the sacramentum.
I’ve shared before how the early church, the early church took this word for the sacred oath, the sacramentum, and they applied it to communion. They called communion the sacramentum. Why did they do that? Because they believed that communion was a time when the people of Christ came and renewed their vows. Communion was a time when the people of Christ came and committed themselves anew to faithfulness unto Christ and His eternal kingdom. So, as we come this morning, that’s what the Spirit of God is calling us to do, not only to celebrate His grace and mercy and His body broken, His blood shed and the substitutionary atonement by which we’ve found forgiveness, but also to commit ourselves anew to Christ, to His church and to His kingdom, to faithful stewardship, to serve Him well with ALL that has been entrusted to us. Let’s look to the Lord with a word of prayer.