LIFE LESSONS
HEROES
COMMUNION SUNDAY
DR. JIM DIXON
HEBREWS 11:23-12:2
AUGUST 18, 2002
John Adams was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America, and he was one of those who pledged his life, his fortune, and his sacred honor. He was the first American to stand before King George III of England as a representative of this newborn nation. John Adams was the second president of the United States and the first president to live in the White House. He died on the 50th anniversary of this nation. He died on July 4, 1826, the same day that Thomas Jefferson died.
John Adams was a man of deep faith. He was a man of great courage. His story is beautifully told in this biography called “John Adams” by David McCullough. This book, highly recommended, has of course been a best seller for many weeks and for many months. In fact, biographies have never been more popular than they are today. The A&E Channel ran a regular series called Biography, and it became so popular that they began the Biography Channel. The Biography Channel deals with nothing but biographies, and it is extremely popular. Biography Magazine is now published. Denzel Washington is on the cover of this magazine. The motto of the magazine is, “Every life has a story.” Biographies have never been more popular.
We begin this week a new series on biographies, biblical biographies, life’s lessons from biblical characters. We will begin next week with Adam and Eve, and we will move through the major characters of the Bible, heroes and villains. We do this in conjunction with the Year of the Bible, although it may take us more than a year.
Why are we doing this? I want us to understand this at the outset, and there are two reasons. First, we do this because we seek divine knowledge. We are undertaking this new series because we seek divine knowledge.
We live in a very special part of the world, all of us here. This church is situated and placed in a very special part of the world. This church is situated in Douglas County. According to the National Census, Douglas County is one of the most educated counties in the United States—by some standards, the singular most educated county in the United States. There is a higher percentage of high school graduates in Douglas County than any other county in America. Douglas County is in the top ten counties in the United States in terms of the percentage of college graduates. It’s one of the most educated counties in the United States and one of the most educated places in the world. There are not many people in Douglas County who are functionally illiterate. There are probably no people in this worship center this morning who are functionally illiterate. But 450,000 people in the State of Colorado are functionally illiterate—450,000 people cannot read at a sixth-grade level of reading in the State of Colorado. Forty million Americans are functionally illiterate, and 1,500,000,000 in the world are functionally illiterate and they cannot read at a sixth-grade level.
That is why Wycliffe Bible Translators and other organizations that seek to take the scriptures to the world are having to change their strategies. In the past they thought, “Well, we’ll just translate the Bible into the languages of the world and that way all the people groups of the world will have the scriptures.” But now ministry organizations understand it is not as simple as that because people all over the world cannot read. One billion five hundred million people cannot read. If you translate the Bible into their language, it does not matter because they cannot read their own language. So, now missionary organizations are beginning to change their strategy, beginning to work with literacy, beginning to train people all over the world in literacy and reading.
Why do they do this? Because these missionaries are seeking to impart divine knowledge. That is what it is all about. They want people to have divine knowledge. They want them to be able to read the Bible. They want them to be able to read about Jesus Christ.
In the early church, there was a cultic religion—really, at the end of the first century—that invaded the churches. This religion was called Gnosticism, from the Greek word “gnosis,” which means knowledge. This cultic religion thought that they had exclusive truth and that they were the only source of divine knowledge. They infiltrated the Christian churches. In the second and the third centuries, they were extremely popular, and the movement reached its height. They produced the Gnostic Gospels, written 150 after the biblical Gospels were written. They were deemed bogus even in their time, although they are popular today. You can buy them at New Age bookstores and secular bookstores.
The Gnostics were almost like New Agers. They combined Christianity with Judaism and Greek philosophy and a lot of eastern religious mysticism. They divided the world into three groups of people: hylics, psychics, and pneumatics. They said most of the people in the world are hylic, which means that they are preoccupied with the material. Gnostics viewed material things as evil. So, most of the people in the world are hylic, they are preoccupied with material, and they are lost forever.
Then some people in the world are psychic, and psychic people, from the Greek word “psyche,” which means soul, are capable of dealing with things of the soul but they, too, are lost. They are a large group. The groups of psyches is not as large as the hylic group, but they too are lost. They are noble in intent, seeking higher things, but they are still lost.
The only people in the world who are okay are the people who are pneumatic. This is a very exclusive, small group. The Gnostics themselves claimed they were the pneumatics. The pneumatics, from the Greek word “pneumos,” which means Spirit, claimed to be the only spiritual people. They were the only ones capable of divine knowledge. No one else in the world was even capable of divine knowledge. Hylics, psychics—they were not capable of divine knowledge. Only pneumatic.
Of course, today historians and theologians look back and they recognize that Gnostics were eclectic, and they were diverse in their thinking. They distinguished between Syrian and Alexandrian Gnostics, and they distinguished between Monastic and Dualistic Gnostics, and they distinguished between Ascetic and Libertine Gnostics. But on this all Gnostics agree: Divine knowledge was the exclusive property of the Gnostics, not even available to normal people.
You see, the Bible has a very different message. Divine knowledge is available to you. It is offered to all of the people of the world. It is offered to everybody. That is why Jesus Christ came into the world. He said, “For this I was born and for this I came into the world, that I might bear witness to the truth.” He said, “Ego eimi alethea.” “I am the truth.” He said, “You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” You will know it. Divine knowledge. It is offered in Christ through His Word to everyone.
I know you have all heard of King George III of England. I mentioned him earlier. King George III was, of course, the king who ruled when this nation was born, when the Revolutionary War took place. Historians tell us that in his diary, on July 4, 1776, King George III wrote these words: “Nothing happened today.” That is what he wrote on July 4, 1776. “Nothing happened today.”
The colonies were in the midst of revolution. The Continental Congress had ratified the Constitution, or the Declaration of Independence, and the king wrote, “Nothing happened today.” Part of his empire was crumbling, and he was blissful. Why was that? The answer is that he was ignorant. He was unavoidably ignorant because he lived in a time when communication was not high tech, and it took a long time for messages to travel from one part of the world to another. It took weeks, sometimes months, for messages to travel from one part of the world to the other. So on July 4, 1776, as far as he knew, nothing was happening.
We live in a different world today, and it is a high-tech world. We are all in the know. When a loved one dies, we know about it instantly. Even if they are in another state, we know about it instantly. If they are in another part of the world, generally speaking, we know almost instantly. It is a high-tech world. If our stocks are not doing so well, we are not ignorant about that. It is in the paper every morning, or you can go on the Internet and just find out instantly how your stocks are doing because we are all in the know.
When King George III lived, people were ignorant of many things. Many people had cancer and never knew it. They lived and died not knowing they had cancer. But, of course, it’s a different world today. We have doctors and they have increasingly sophisticated technology. They can tell us when we have cancer, and they can tell us the rate of that cancer’s growth. Sometimes they can even tell us within a range how long they think we are going to live. We are in the know.
But, of course, do you WANT to be in the know? A lot of people would rather be ignorant. Some people would rather be ignorant about political things. Some people would just as soon not know about financial things. Many people would just as soon not know about medical things, and they are afraid of doctors. They would rather be blissfully ignorant. I think many people in the world would rather not know about divine knowledge too. They would rather be ignorant about this Book. They would just rather not know. I think the reason has to do with our second point. We are entering this new series because we seek divine knowledge, and secondly and finally because we seek divine character. We seek the character of God, godly character.
If you have divine knowledge, it is meant to lead to divine character. You have to ask yourself, do you really want that? Do you really want to have the character of God? Do you want your life to change? Do you want transformation? Do I want transformation? Do I want to be molded by God? I think sometimes some people would just as soon not know the truth because they do not want to change.
I remember in the fourth chapter of Matthew we read about the temptation of Christ and how Christ was in the wilderness when Satan came to Him. Satan tempted Him threefold. In that second temptation, as recorded in Matthew, chapter 4, verse 6, Satan quotes the Bible to Jesus. He quotes Psalm 91, verses 11 and 12. How strange that is. But do not think it’s strange. Satan knows the Bible and he has divine knowledge. But, you see, divine knowledge is not enough because he doesn’t seek divine character. He rejected divine character long ago and divine knowledge avails Him nothing because he does not seek the character of God.
Did you know that the Pharisees memorized the Bible? They memorized the Torah, the Pentateuch, the first five books of our Bible—Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. They memorized them. You couldn’t be a Pharisee if you didn’t memorize the Pentateuch. They knew them word-for-word. They had divine knowledge, and they were rejected by Christ above all others for their arrogance and their hypocrisy, their self-righteousness. They did not seek the character of God. They did not want divine character. Knowing the Bible, divine knowledge, is not enough. You have got to want to be transformed by Christ. As we go through this series, this is our goal—transformation.
Many years ago, when I was growing up, I went to Christian camps. I went, most of all, to a camp in Southern California called Forest Home. It was founded by Hollywood Presbyterian Church and specifically by a woman named Henrietta Mears. It was and still is one of the great camps of America, certainly in the state of California. Forest Home and Mt. Herman are the two most renowned Christian camps. I went to family camp with my brothers and with my parents when I was really young, and then I went to junior high camp at Forest Home and high school camp at Forest Home, and college briefing conferences at Forest Home. They were wonderful experiences.
I remember one college briefing conference at the end of the week. You would march through the trees on the final night to a place called Victory Circle. It was an outdoor amphitheater. They built a big bonfire down front and all the college students would sit around. They would have a service, and they would ask people just to come down and give a testimony of what God had done in their life at camp that week and to make a commitment in the presence of God and many witnesses. They would ask you to take a stick and throw it into the fire as a token of your consecration and the commitment that you were making. Many people came and they made commitments and gave testimonies, and some shared life verses. I remember one young man came down. I was sitting in the back with my friends. This young man came down and he stood by the fire. He picked up a stick. He said, “I want to commit my life to my new life verse, 1 Chronicles 26:18. “For Parbar westward, four at the causeway and two at Parbar.” Then he threw his stick into the fire, and he walked off the stage. Everybody thought, “What was that about? What in the world does that mean?”
He quoted 1 Chronicles 26:18 out of the King James version, “For Parbar westward, four at the causeway and two at Parbar.” What does that mean? His life verse? The answer is nobody knows. I mean, the word “parbar” is simply the transliteration of the Hebrew word that no one knows the meaning of. You can look in your NIV and it will say colonnade for parbar, but it’s just a guess. You can find other translations that will give other meanings. Most translations just say “parbar” because they do not know what it means.
What good is the book if you do not know what it means? But, you see, that passage of scripture DOES have meaning. You go back to 1 Chronicles, the 26th chapter, and it’s all about instructions given to the gatekeepers of the House of God. The message to the gatekeepers of the House of God is this: Your service is important. Whatever service you render, no matter how small, even as gatekeepers, is precious to God. Here are some instructions for you when you’re at the crossroads or when you’re at the par bar, wherever you are. Here are some instructions for you and take them seriously because even the service you render is precious to God. All service to God is precious.
Every passage of scripture has meaning. My responsibility as a fellow Christian is to know the Word and to submit to it. That is your responsibility, too, as a Christian, to know the Word, submit to it, and to seek Godly character. My responsibility as a pastor is to instruct you in the Word. That is my call, to instruct you in the Word, to help you understand what verses and chapters and books of the Bible are saying so that you might have divine knowledge but also so that your character and my character might begin to begin to experience metamorphosis and change and transformation.
We are the people of Christ. We have committed our life to Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, and He wants to change us into His image. That is why we are doing this series, that we might be transformed piecemeal, bit-by-bit, into the image of Christ.
I bear this responsibility to you that I teach the Word and I explain the Word so that you might better understand it. Your responsibility before Christ as the Holy Spirit indwells you is to submit to the Word—not to me, but to the Word, that you might grow and might be transformed.
So why are we plowing through the Bible looking at all these life stories, all these biographies beginning with Adam and Eve next week? We are doing it so that we might grow in knowledge and then ultimately in the character of Christ. Before we come to the Lord’s Table, let us have a word of prayer.